Marisa

“Clap your hands,” Luzia said, surprised at the command in her voice. It had the snap of a whip over a horse’s back. The man’s laugh died on his lips. Who was a peasant to command a person of his stature? And yet, in this room, on this night, he had asked for her to perform, and so her impudence must be permitted. Such was the temporary power of the singer, the actor, the fool.”
― Leigh Bardugo, The Familiar

“Among us, for instance, in Western Europe, freedom is officially approved. But such freedom makes me think of the poor female cousin in certain middle-class families. She has become a widow; she has lost her natural protector. So she has been taken in, given a room on the top floor, and is welcome in the kitchen. She is occasionally paraded publicly on Sunday, to prove that one is virtuous and not a dirty dog. But for everything else, and especially on state occasions, she is requested to keep her mouth shut. And even if some policeman idly takes liberties with her in dark corners, one doesn't make a fuss about it, for she has seen such things before, especially with the master of the house, and, after all, it's not worth getting in bad with the legal authorities.”
― Albert Camus, Create Dangerously

“But what would happen if one no longer believed in the existence of normal language, of ordinary speech, of the linguistic norm?”
― Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

“Perhaps when you're young you think that something must be profound just because it is difficult and you don't have the self-confidence to say 'this is just nonsense”
― Francis Fukuyama