Ralph

“Ankit makes a drink that’s gonna make Randall absinthe with envy. It’s like a liquid portal between dimensions. You’ve gotta try it.’ ‘Always a pleasure to prepare the portal for you, sir.’ ‘You girls have got so much in common,’ I said, and thought to say more, but Blue Hijab and Karla looked at me in exactly the same not very flattering way, and I unthought it. ‘You marry them,’ Blue Hijab said, ‘hoping they’ll change, and grow. And they marry us, hoping that we won’t.’ ‘The connubial Catch 22,’ Karla said, taking Blue Hijab by the arm and leading her back to the Bedouin tent. ‘Come with me, you poor girl, and freshen up. You look very tired. How far have you come today?”
― Gregory David Roberts, The Mountain Shadow

“I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction

“Stories like Yu’s shocked Yang. ‘I did not foresee this level of cruelty,’ he said. ‘There was cannibalism in ancient times in famines. People used to talk about “exchanging children to eat”, because they could not bear to eat their own children. But this was much worse.’ Even the final nationwide death toll, a figure which has been known in the west for more than two decades, was a revelation.”
― Richard McGregor, The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers

“Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby. No hitchhiking. And if you want to strike out in any new direction — you go alone. With a machete in your hand and the fear of God in your heart.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction