Chaimaa

“When you’re young, you do so many things hoping to be noticed. The way you dress or stand, the music played loud enough to catch the attention of another person who might know a song, too. And then there are things you do as you step out into the world, the real world full of strange adults, testing out what it means to be generous or thoughtful. In that instant, before every memory was placed along some narrative arc, before the act of remembering took on a desperate air, I simply felt lucky enough to witness something so effortlessly kind - to see my friend do something that was good.”
― Hua Hsu, Stay True

“إننا كلنا، كلنا بلا استثناء، كل الموجودات، نحنُ والقطط والغزلان، والغزلان التي تستحيل إلى هداهد، نقتحم الدوائر نفسها، جميعنا حُجاج في طريق الحياة نفسه، وكلنا بلا استثناء، علينا أن نُضيع أنفسنا قبل أن نجدها مجددًا”
― حمزة كاشغري, الشاعر والقرصان

“Sadly I write in my quiet room, alone as I have always been, alone as I will always be. And I wonder if my apparently negligible voice might not embody the essence of thousands of voices, the longing for self-expression
of thousands of lives, the patience of millions of souls resigned like my own to their daily lot, their useless dreams, and their hopeless hopes. In these moments my heart beats faster because I’m conscious of it. I live more
because I live on high. I feel a religious force within me, a species of prayer, a kind of public outcry. But my mind quickly puts me in my place… I remember that I’m on the fourth floor of the Rua dos Douradores; I feel drowsy; I look at my unlovely hand resting on this half-written page and at the cheap cigarette in my left hand, hovering over the fraying blotter. Me in this fourth-floor room, interrogating life!, saying what souls feel!,
writing prose like a genius or a famous author! Me, here, a genius! …”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Will these days ever come again?"

My friend had meant it in an offhand way, but the comment cut deep.

"Not the same days," someone said sadly.”
― Shin Kyung-sook, I'll Be Right There