Rashmirekha Basu

“Considering how much we are all given to discuss the characters of others, and discuss them often not in the strictest spirit of charity, it is singular how little we are inclined to think that others can speak ill-naturedly of us, and how angry and hurt we are when proof reaches us that they have done so. It is hardly too much to say that we all of us occasionally speak of our dearest friends in a manner in which those dearest friends would very little like to hear themselves mentioned, and that we nevertheless expect that our dearest friends shall invariably speak of us as though they were blind to all our faults, but keenly alive to every shade of our virtues.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“It's like something he assumed was just a painted backdrop all his life has revealed itself to be real: foreign cities are real, and famous artworks, and underground railway systems, and remnants of the Berlin Wall. That's money, the substance that makes the world real. There's something so corrupt and sexy about it.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“O, she said, a woman in love can't afford to be proud. He must be made to see, he must be made to come back. And I must do it myself, no matter how silly it looks.”
― Brian Moore, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

“His intelligence stretched her to the limits, and then changed what those limits were.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana