Mackenzie

“In the years since those days, people have asked me not only to remember the riots but also to explain them. How can I explain? I want you to understand: leaving my grandmother’s house was the first choice I made without my brother, the first choice I made alone. I decided how to proceed, but how little I remember, how little I know for certain. I have tried to retrace my own steps, to find where I made mistakes, to repair them. What could I have done differently to travel once more with my brother, to see Rajendran smoking at the top of the lane, to keep Nanthini Chelliah from becoming a widow? You must understand—or someday, I must understand: there was nothing I could have done.”
― V.V. Ganeshananthan, Brotherless Night

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“It's never too late to have a happy childhood.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker