Leila Mekhdi > Leila's Quotes

“It is there in the white men and women who do not understand, to the point of frustration, why we still walk with the noose of our ancestors around our necks, as we cannot comprehend how they do not carry the indignity of their ancestors tying it there.”
― Chimene Suleyman, The Good Immigrant

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”
― Patanjali

“In another universe, I meet my father when he is a child.
We play catch in the woods and as we play he tells me he isn't allowed to cry but sometimes the world hurts him and he doesn't know what to do with all that pain.
So I give him the shoulder he needs to cry on.
And he does. He does until the tears are done.
Afterwards, I buy him ice cream and I listen to his laugh, the glowing warm laugh of a child who knows he is safe.
I wish someone could have done that for him.
Been a kind, safe place for the child he used to be.
Would it have made a difference?
Would it have made a difference?”
― Nikita Gill

“Today many people, especially the young, think it was only America that defeated Hitler. Little is known about the price the Soviet people paid for the victory—twenty million human lives in four years.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II

“For the only great men among the unfree and the oppressed are those who struggle to destroy the oppressor.”
― Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am only going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do... on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest, paid passage back to the world out there...”
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem