Alaa

“Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I'm beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so. That it's actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative - they colonize us. They commission us. They insist on being told. Fiction and nonfiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons that I don't fully understand, fiction dances out of me, and nonfiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“Even in the most uneventful of our lives, we are called upon to choose our battles...”
― Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“There's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”
― Arundhati Roy

“وأَنا الغريب بكُلِّ ما أُوتيتُ من
لُغَتي . ولو أخضعتُ عاطفتي بحرف
الضاد ، تخضعني بحرف الياء عاطفتي ،
وللكلمات وَهيَ بعيدةٌ أَرضٌ تُجاوِرُ
كوكباً أَعلى . وللكلمات وَهيَ قريبةٌ
منفى . ولا يكفي الكتابُ لكي أَقول :
وجدتُ نفسي حاضراً مِلْءَ الغياب .
وكُلَّما فَتَّشْتُ عن نفسي وجدتُ
الآخرين . وكُلَّما فتَّشْتُ عَنْهُمْ لم
أَجد فيهم سوى نَفسي الغريبةِ ،
هل أَنا الفَرْدُ الحُشُودُ ؟”
― محمود درويش, جدارية