Erik

“They made you believe you had power; they hammered at your brain over the barracks loudspeakers; they commanded you in the name of your country; and they gave you your share of guilt so you could not wash your hands of it but would be forever bound by ties of blood.”
― Isabel Allende, Of Love and Shadows

“In a fit of nostalgia, and because he was the only man Samad knew on this little island, Samad had sought Archie out, moved into the same London borough. And slowly but surely a kind of friendship was being rekindled between the two men.

'You play like a faggot,' said Samad”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth

“Dear Critics, since you employ the term "absurd humor," you should introduce its counterpart, "absurd seriousness." Learn to distinguish between forced and primitive seriousness, lighthearted and gallows seriousness. This bracingly sensical conception will jump-start critics and journalists alike. Do we not require, in life as in art, indiscriminate seriousness? bawdy seriousness? sparkling seriousness? spirited seriousness? I would read with pleasure about thinker X's "terrific sense of seriousness," about bard Ys "pearls of seriousness," about avant-garde Z's "offensive seriousness." Some reviewer or other will finally decide to remark that "playwright N. N.'s feeble play is redeemed by the effervescent seriousness of its conclusion" or that "in W.S's poetry one catches notes of unintentional seriousness." And why don't humor magazines have columns of seriousness? And why, moreover, do we have so many humor magazines and so few serious ones? Well?”
― Wisława Szymborska, Nonrequired Reading

“This story—which begins and begins—starts again here.”
― Ann Patchett, These Precious Days: Essays