Abhilasha Singh

“Like nothing you’ve felt before—but once you have, you know it’s the only thing that will ever feel real.”
― Gautam Bhatia, The Wall

“Maybe everything bad that happens to you makes you weaker," said Giovanni, as though he had not heard me, "and so you can stand less and less.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Is it not odd that when we arrive at a new place living its new moment we start to look for our old things in it? Is there something new for strangers? Or do they go around the world with baskets full of the stains of the past? The stains fall but the hand does not drop the basket.”

Excerpt From: Mourid Barghouti. “I Saw Ramallah”.”
― Mourid Barghouti

“Love him,’ said Jacques, with vehemence, ‘love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? And how long, at the best, can it last, since you are both men and still have everywhere to go? Only five minutes, I assure you, only five minutes, and most of that, helas! in the dark. And if you think of them as dirty, then they will be dirty— they will be dirty because you will be giving nothing, you will be despising your flesh and his. But you can make your time together anything but dirty, you can give each other something which will make both of you better—forever—if you will not be ashamed, if you will only not play it safe.’ He paused, watching me, and then looked down to his cognac. ‘You play it safe long enough,’ he said, in a different tone, ‘and you’ll end up trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever—like me.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room