Melissa

“I believe the stars align so souls can find one another. Whether they are meant to be souls in love or souls in life remains to be seen.”
― Renee Ahdieh, Flame in the Mist

“If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Having escaped the Dark Ages in which animals were mere stimulus-response machines, we are free to contemplate their mental lives. It is a great leap forward, the one that Griffin fought for. But now that animal cognition is an increasingly popular topic, we are still facing the mindset that animal cognition can be only a poor substitute of what we humans have. It can’t be truly deep and amazing. Toward the end of a long career, many a scholar cannot resist shining a light on human talents by listing all the things we are capable of and animals not. From the human perspective, these conjectures may make a satisfactory read, but for anyone interested, as I am, in the full spectrum of cognitions on our planet, they come across as a colossal waste of time. What a bizarre animal we are that the only question we can ask in relation to our place in nature is “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the smartest of them all?”
― Frans de Waal, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

“Dalia was headstrong. She came into the world screaming, letting no doubt that she was there. She hated school. When she was a child, she had to go three days a week. She spent most of her time fighting with the instructor - telling him, or her, they were wrong. Dalia asked questions." He let out a gentle laugh. "Dalia was what was known as an 'enquiring mind'. But even though she was brighter than most of the people around her, she wasn't interested in academics. She didn't perform well in the tests at school.”
― S.M. Wilson