Selman

“I might know, too, what Baldwin meant when he said only love could assuage America's race problem, but I can only grasp it when I think of romantic love. I did, after all, fall in love with Turkey. I fell in love with Istanbul, with Rana, with Caner, with all the Turks and Istanbullus who welcomed me; I fell in love with foreign men, with the cats of Cihangir, with the Anatolian roads, with even the smell of burning coal in winter. When you are in love, you feel a superhuman amount of empathy because, crucially, it is in your self-interest to do so. It wasn't until I loved like this that I could understand why only love could solve America's race problem, and by extension its imperial one: that it is not until one contemplates loving someone, caring about that person's physical and emotional well-being, wanting that person to thrive, wanting to protect that person, and most of all wanting to understand that person, that we can imagine what it would feel like if that person was hurt, if that person were hurt by others or, most important, if that person was hurt by you. Only if that person's suffering becomes your suffering —which is in a sense what love is— and only when white Americans begin to look upon another people's destruction as they would their own, will they finally feel the levels of rational and irrational rage terrifying enough to vanquish a century of their own indifference.”
― Suzy Hansen, Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World

“She's lovely and she's with Skinner, and they're probably in love and there's no justice in this world”
― Irvine Welsh, The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs

“Since he was sixteen, he had been continuously sexually active, either with a girlfriend or through a series of casual flings. From the point of someone like Kibby, he considered, he would be regarded as highly succesful with women.

But the real problem is relationships, which fucking social retards like Kibby can't grasp, because they're just so obsessed with getting their hole.”
― Irvine Welsh, The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs

“There are two essential kinds of loneliness: that of not having found someone to love, and that of having been deprived of the one you did love. The first kind is worse. Nothing can compare to the loneliness of the soul in adolescence.”
― Julian Barnes, Levels of Life