Willem

“Now she tried to imagine what she might be if she were living somewhere else. 'What if I were a sparkle perched right on top of the stars, or a bird flitting along from rooftop to rooftop and branch to branch?' she pondered, letting her thoughts spin out of control and become more and more strange. One day, as she sat alone in a corner looking at Atiye, she asked herself, 'Now who is this woman?' Then, turning her eyes on her elder brother and Zekiye, she thought, 'And who're they?' Growing frightened, Dirmit found that the more she looked the less she knew any of these people.”
― Latife Tekin, Sevgili Arsız Ölüm

“Aren't those the absolute worst scenarios: the things that might have happened but never did and might still happen though we've given up hoping they could.”
― André Aciman, Find Me

“Some novels even overdramatize events, which, in real life, happen in a far more unassuming and inconsequential way; they happen, then they're over, they run into one another, floating like clouds scattered by the wind between the odd deceptive pause that turns out to be impossible, because time—which no one understands—stops for nothing.”
― Enrique Vila-Matas, Mac y su contratiempo

“In parallel, he devised a system of underpasses and circuitous routes for Palestinian villagers who were barred from accessing the settler highways cutting through their lands. These were given the benevolent-sounding name of "fabric of life" roads. In private, Israeli officials called the something more honest. Speaking to the US ambassador in Tel Aviv, who summarised the conversation in a diplomatic cable, Israel's deputy defense minister referred to them as "apartheid roads.”
― Nathan Thrall, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy