Aabha Sharma

“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

“But he wounded me and insulted my heart. I – I do not love him, because I can love only that which is magnanimous, which understands me, which is noble;”
― 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

“She believed in God; and the gods. It was the same thing, logic didn’t come into it. You just believed, you did puja to the idols, you asked them for favours and guidance. Occasionally you visited a temple or got hold of a Brahmin to perform certain rituals. You went to a guru and sat at his feet. All that embedded you in a way of being called Hinduism. You”
― M.G. Vassanji, A Delhi Obsession: A Novel