Alyssa > Recent Status Updates

i am finding comfort in reading this book :)))

“Maybe this isn’t the kind of love that deserves to exist. Maybe it’s the kind that wars start over. The kind that topples empires and never leaves the world better than it found it.”

“That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”

“But I do think there is a pure realm of meaning — a language in between, where all concepts are perfectly expressed, which we have not been able to approximate. There is a sense, a feeling of when we have got it right.”

“Because of your origins, you have the gift of languages those born in England cannot imitate. And you, like Psammetichus’s boys, are the tongues that will speak this vision of global harmony into being.”

“Ever since his arrival in London, Robin had tried to keep his head down and assimilate, to play down his otherness. He thought the more unremarkable he seemed, the less attention he would draw. But Ramy, who had no choice but to stand out, had decided he might as well dazzle. He was bold to the extreme. Robin found him incredible and a little bit terrifying.”

“So what does that tell you, Birdie? If they’re going to tell stories about you, use it to your advantage.”

“This was how things had always been between them: conversations unfinished, words best left unsaid.”

“he buried his past life, not because it was so terrible, but because abandoning it was the only way to survive.”

“No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not”

“People are a lot more knowable than they think they are”

Everything’s going to be all right, he says. Trust me. I love you, I’m not going to let anything like that happen to you again.

“Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything”

“Life was different after that; maybe he had never understood how different it was.”

“I don’t really know what happened with us in the end.”

“To feel that life was happening here, in this place, and not somewhere else far away.”

“Most people go through their whole lives, without really feeling that close with anyone.”