No subscription or hidden extras
Read through the most famous quotes by topic #jan
I lose faith in mathematics, logical and rigid. What with those that even zero doesn’t accept? ↗
#acceptance #dejan-stojanovic #faith #literature #literature-quotes
She reached out and touched the bright colors of the cashmere scarf, her face filled with wonder as much as shock. "This . . .this is Ibrahim's scarf . . .it's a family heirloom. . . " "No, it belongs to this mobster guy named Abe. . . [...] "Mom," I said disbelievingly. "You know Abe." "Yes, Rose. I know him." "Please don't tell me. . ." Oh, man. Why couldn't I have been an illegitimate half-royal like Robert Doru? Or even the mail-man's daughter? "Please don't tell me Abe is my father. . . . " She didn't have to tell me. It was all over her face. "Oh God, " I said. "I'm Zmey's daughter. Zmey Junior. Zmeyette, even." That got her attention. She looked up at me. "What on earth are you talking about?" "Nothing," I said. ↗
I resolutely refuse to believe that the state of Edward's health had anything to do with this, and I don't say this only because I was once later accused of attacking him 'on his deathbed.' He was entirely lucid to the end, and the positions he took were easily recognizable by me as extensions or outgrowths of views he had expressed (and also declined to express) in the past. Alas, it is true that he was closer to the end than anybody knew when the thirtieth anniversary reissue of his Orientalism was published, but his long-precarious condition would hardly argue for giving him a lenient review, let alone denying him one altogether, which would have been the only alternatives. In the introduction he wrote for the new edition, he generally declined the opportunity to answer his scholarly critics, and instead gave the recent American arrival in Baghdad as a grand example of 'Orientalism' in action. The looting and destruction of the exhibits in the Iraq National Museum had, he wrote, been a deliberate piece of United States vandalism, perpetrated in order to shear the Iraqi people of their cultural patrimony and demonstrate to them their new servitude. Even at a time when anything at all could be said and believed so long as it was sufficiently and hysterically anti-Bush, this could be described as exceptionally mendacious. So when the Atlantic invited me to review Edward's revised edition, I decided I'd suspect myself more if I declined than if I agreed, and I wrote what I felt I had to. Not long afterward, an Iraqi comrade sent me without comment an article Edward had contributed to a magazine in London that was published by a princeling of the Saudi royal family. In it, Edward quoted some sentences about the Iraq war that he off-handedly described as 'racist.' The sentences in question had been written by me. I felt myself assailed by a reaction that was at once hot-eyed and frigidly cold. He had cited the words without naming their author, and this I briefly thought could be construed as a friendly hesitance. Or as cowardice... I can never quite act the stern role of Mr. Darcy with any conviction, but privately I sometimes resolve that that's 'it' as it were. I didn't say anything to Edward but then, I never said anything to him again, either. I believe that one or two charges simply must retain their face value and not become debauched or devalued. 'Racist' is one such. It is an accusation that must either be made good upon, or fully retracted. I would not have as a friend somebody whom I suspected of that prejudice, and I decided to presume that Edward was honest and serious enough to feel the same way. I feel misery stealing over me again as I set this down: I wrote the best tribute I could manage when he died not long afterward (and there was no strain in that, as I was relieved to find), but I didn't go to, and wasn't invited to, his funeral. ↗
#cowardice #edward-said #fitzwilliam-darcy #george-w-bush #house-of-saud
Either you will be you or you will not be at all. ↗
#dejan-stojanovic #literature #literature-quotes #philosophy #poetry
I did not have an opportunity to speak privately with Peter until just as he was leaving, when he handed me one of the Burns song-sheets and (with a most earnest look) told me to read it before I went to bed. The song was 'My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose,' but it was not until was up in my bedchamber that I saw he had written on the inside page: 'My mother would be honoured if you visited her after church tomorrow. ↗
أعددت قائمة سوداء بكل من تعامل مع هذا النظام خلال 18 يوماً من أعظم أيام جيلنا، بل ومن أعظم أيام العصر الحديث، تعاملوا مع النظام القديم واساؤا إلينا وإلى ثورتنا وقاموا بإهانتنا (...) هذه القائمة التي رحت أعدها لحظة بلحظة طوال الأيام الثمانية عشر التي أشعلنا فيها ثورتنا.. قمت بحذفها منذ دقائق، لإيماني العميق بأن الساعي إلى الحرية لا يقوم بتنصيب محاكم التفتيش للآخرين ولا يسعى إلى تصفية حسابات مع البعض سواء يعرفهم بشكل شخصي أو تضرر منهم في الإطار العام، وأن وصم البعض بآرائهم هو فعل ينتمي إلى نظام حسني مبارك بامتياز ويجب ألا نسمح لأفعال هذا النظام بالتسرب مجدداً لتلوث روحنا التي تطهرت بوهج ثورتنا العظيمة. ↗
Tell me something only you know and make a new friend. ↗
#dejan-stojanovic #friends #friendship #literature #literature-quotes
Then he leaned over, right there in the restaurant parking lot, and kissed me. And it wasn’t a friendship kiss, either. It was tender and real, and utterly romantic. ↗
