BookQuote2

For the first time in my life something new awoke within me, something irresistible: I still cannot explain it. It was a need to express myself, yes, to express myself, not only to see and sense the world, but to bring to others my vision, my thoughts and sensations, to describe the beauty of the earth as inspiringly as Daniyar could sing. I caught my breath for fear and joy of the unknown. At that time, however, I had not yet realized the need to take up brush and paints.   - Jamilia by Chingiz Aïtmatov

the sun setting calmly in the thicket of needle-grass beyond the river, and the solitary distant rider on the horizon’s fiery margin dashing in pursuit - surely all he had to do was stretch out his hand and touch the sun and he too would vanish into the thickets and twilight. - Jamilia by Chingiz Aïtmatov

As for me, his voice seemed to dog my every step. It was with me every morning while I ran across the wet lucerne field to the hobbled horses, as the laughing sun slid out from behind the hills to greet me. I heard his voice in the soft rustling of golden wheat as it was tossed up into the wind by the old winnowers, and in the solitary kite flying gracefully high above the steppe. I saw and heard his music in everything. - Jamilia by Chingiz Aïtmatov

And all of a sudden I began to understand his strangeness that made people shrug and mock; his dreaminess, his love of solitude, his silent manner. Now I understood why he sat on the look-out hill of an evening and why he spent a night by himself on the riverbank, why he constantly hearkened to sounds others could not hear and why his eyes would suddenly gleam and his drawn eyebrows twitch. He was a man deeply in love. I felt it was not simply a love for another person, it was somehow an uncommon, expansive love for life and earth. He had kept this love within himself, in his music, in his very being. A person with no feeling, no matter how good his voice, could never have sung like that. - Jamilia by Chingiz Aïtmatov

I have never heard such singing before or since. The tune was like neither Kirgiz nor Kazakh, yet in it was something of both. His music combined the very best melodies of the two related peoples and had woven them into a single, unrepeatable song. It was a song of the mountains and the steppe, first soaring up into the sky like the Kirgiz mountains, then rolling freely like the Kazakh steppe. - Jamilia by Chingiz Aïtmatov

One could choose to be nothing, or one could choose to be happy. And Sister Gravel had chosen to be happy, mage-curse be damned. - The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

She hated that. Hated feeling like her existence was not heavy enough to leave any mark in this space that should have been hers, this room that should have been a refuge from the life outside its doors. - The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

She hated herself for showing such weakness, but she would hate herself more if she didn't ask. Didn't even try. - The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

I am more than just what I do; I am a person, and I am alive, and that is purpose enough - The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

Familiarity could look very much like love from a certain angle, if one didn't look too hard. - The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

Now he didn’t shout any more, because he thought how horrible it would be if nobody answered him. - Moominland Midwinter by Tove Jansson

If I only knew that he knew that I’m climbing these mountains for his sake, then I could do it. But all alone I’ll never manage it. - Moominland Midwinter by Tove Jansson

The evening darkness came crawling out of the clefts and climbed slowly up towards the frozen ridges. Up there the snow was gleaming like bared fangs against the black mountain; white and black, and loneliness everywhere. - Moominland Midwinter by Tove Jansson

He looked at the jasmine bush that was an untidy tangle of bare sprigs, and he thought: ‘It’s dead. All the world has died while I slept. This world belongs to somebody else whom I don’t know. - Moominland Midwinter by Tove Jansson

But the landscape of devastation is still a landscape. There is beauty in ruins. - Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag