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

“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

“It’s all very well your complaining about the rich, but when good fortune brings you money, you simply don’t have the courage of your convictions to give it back to the poor…You will never deserve to be happy while you still have things you call your own or while your hatred of the bourgeoisie is still no more than a desperate desire to be bourgeois yourselves.”
― 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