Aabha Sharma

“Absolutely without stories of any kind! I lived, as they say, on my own, that is, absolutely alone – alone, completely alone – do you understand what it means to be alone?’ ‘But what do you mean by alone? Do you mean you never see anyone?’ ‘Oh, no, of course I see people, but nevertheless I am alone.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“Would you have abandoned a girl who came to you on her own, would you have thrown in her face a shameless jeer at her weak, foolish heart? Would you have looked after her? Would you have understood that she was all alone, that she didn’t know how to take care of herself, that she didn’t know how to protect herself from loving you, that it wasn’t her fault, that, finally, it wasn’t her fault … that she had done nothing! … Oh, my God, my God! …”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,” was his mildly cadaverous reply.”
― Herman Melville, Bartleby; the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street

“Oh, those bourgeois scum! One day they’d stuff ’em with champagne and truffles till their guts burst! ‘We want bread! We want bread!”
― Émile Zola, Germinal