JoAnna

“He saw himself as a hated prier into the homes of strangers, a kind of intellectual charlatan rationalizing his own prurience into scientific curiosity; someone at once lower and more pretentious than a professional social worker.”
― Harry Sylvester, Dayspring

“Faced with their confused glances and naive questions, I saw that there indeed was, between the writers and that public, however benevolent and sympathetic, a visible barrier. The audience simply did not have enough background information to comprehend what the writers sitting in front of them on the podium were saying.

Confronted with such a lack of understanding, I felt that I had no other choice but to hang on to 'my' group, the writers from Eastern Europe. At least they knew what I was talking about; at least we understood each other's problems, if that was of any comfort to a single one of us. And in any case, even if I had loudly screamed that I didn't want to belong to any group at all, the audience would have put me with them. Perhaps for the first time I became aware of how tired I was of constantly being pushed back into 'my place' every time I made an attempt to break out of it.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Café Europa: Life After Communism

“It was such a nice feeling to know that someone was looking after you... that someone wanted you... that you were important to someone.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Ingleside

“He was not yet in the Church, but already a sin without a name had occurred to him. Ordinarily, the thought might give him pleasure. He remembered Nunes saying that a man must come into the Church on his own intellectual level. And in a horror, remote but clear, saw that the more intelligent a man was, the more various the sins he was capable of committing.”
― Harry Sylvester, Dayspring