Bayan

“Because it’s a fucking disaster to be creative when you know you’re not Mozart or Keats. Dammit, I got tired of scratching around in my past. There’s nothing in me to justify the pretension of creativity. This came before anything, before you, before Raquel, this is a matter of my own emptiness, my awareness of my own limits, maybe my sterility. Does what I’m saying to you seem awful? Now you want to come along and sell me an illusion, which I don’t believe in but which does make me believe that either you’re a fool or you underestimate my intelligence. Why don’t you just leave me alone, so I can fill the emptiness in my own way? Let me see things for myself, learn if something can still grow in my soul, an idea, a faith, because I swear to you, Laura, my soul is more desolate than this rock landscape you see here… why?”
― Carlos Fuentes, Los años con Laura Díaz

“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

“سأظلُّ أحلم دائمًا بذلك الفجر الأزرق الشفيف، وأنت نائمٌ على الأريكة، وأنا أفتح النوافذ، وأصغي للأذان، وأقترب منك، وأصغىِ لصوتِ أنفاسك، وأغفرُ من أجلك للعالم كلَّ ذنوبه”
― أحمد بخيت, الليالي الأربع

“I believe in books that do not go to a ready-made public, I’m looking for readers I would like to make. To win them, to create readers rather than to give something that readers are expecting. That would bore me to death.”
― Carlos Fuentes