Alaa Barrawi

“All this time I had never been able to consider my own situation, nor could I do so yet. I had not the power to attend to it. I was greatly dejected and distressed, but in an incoherent wholesale sort of way. As to forming any plan for the future, I could as soon have formed an elephant. When I opened the shutters and looked out at the wet wild morning, all of a leaden hue; when I walked from room to room; when I sat down again shivering, before the fire, waiting for my laundress to appear; I thought how miserable I was, but hardly knew why, or how long I had been so, or on what day of the week I made the reflection, or even who I was that made it.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“You can't know how I dreaded appearing in school in those miserable poor box dresses. I was perfectly sure to be put down in a class next to the girl who first owned my dress, and she would whisper and giggle and point it out to the others. The bitterness of wearing your enemies cast-off clothes eats into your soul. If I wore silk stockings for the rest of my life, I don't believe I could obliterate the scar.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“I loved her- I always loved her- no matter what she was-I wanted her safe- not shut up- a prisoner for life, eating her heart out. And we did keep her safe- for many years"
Phillip Stark”
― Agatha Christie, By the Pricking of My Thumbs

“He has gone and we are missing him ! When you get accustomed to people or places or ways of living, and then have them snatched away, it does leave an empty, gnawing sort of sensation.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs