Ayla

“I was thinking, "So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I'll be able to make people read my books now.”
― Robert Graves, I, Claudius

“Later, I would come to think of those first days as the time when we learned as a species that we had worried over the wrong things: the hole in the ozone layer, the melting of the ice caps, West Nile and swine flu and killer bees. But I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different—unimagined, unprepared for, unknown.”
― Karen Thompson Walker, The Age of Miracles

“Religious fanaticism is the most dangerous form of insanity.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“[N]othing is as surprising as life. Except for writing. Except for writing. Yes, of course, except for writing, the only consolation.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Black Book