Ashley Davies

“English came with the colonizers, but its literature is part of our heritage too, as is pre-partition writing”
― Soniah Kamal, Unmarriageable

“...the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.

That is their mystery and their magic.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“I waited for the fear to hit; waited for my body to shriek to find a way to get out of this dinner, but ... nothing. Maybe it'd be a mercy to be ended—
A broad hand gripped my face—gently enough not to hurt, but hard enough to make me look at him. "Don't you ever think that," Rhysand hissed, his eyes livid. "Not for one damned moment.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“I’ll never be lonely,”—Alys gave a satisfied sigh— “because I’ll always have books.”
― Soniah Kamal, Unmarriageable