Apurba Biswas > Apurba's Quotes

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“What is realized in the novel is the process of coming to know one's own language as it is perceived in someone else's language, coming to know one's own belief system in someone else's system.”
― Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays

“There is no such thing as a "general language," a language that is spoken by a general voice, that may be divorced from a specific saying, which is charged with particular overtones. Language, when it means, is somebody talking to somebody else, even when that someone else is one's own inner addressee.”
― Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays

“Histories are like novels in that they set out to provide more or less comprehensive accounts of social systems.”
― Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays

“To a greater or lesser extent, every novel is a dialogized system made up of the images of "languages," styles and consciousnesses that are concrete and inseparable from language. Language in the novel not only represents, but itself serves as the object of representation.”
― Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays

“The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“She was no use at maths homework, and some days you could starve rather than get a hot meal from her, but Shuggie looked at her now and understood this was where she excelled. Everyday with the make-up on and her hair done, she climbed out of her grave and held her head high. When she had disgraced herself with drink, she got up the next day, put on her best coat, and faced the world. When her belly was empty and her weans were hungry, she did her hair and let the world think otherwise.”
― Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain

“Sadness made for a better houseguest; at least it was quiet, reliable, consistent.”
― Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain

“She had loved him, and he had needed to break her completely to leave her for good. Agnes Bain was too rare a thing to let someone else love. It wouldn't do to leave pieces of her for another man to collect and repair later.”
― Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain

“Shug had seen it before, those with least to give always gave the most.”
― Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain

“Shuggie heard the nurse say to a male attendant that she thought for sure Agnes was a working girl. “She is not,” said Shuggie, quite proudly. “My mother has never worked a day in her life. She’s far too good-looking for that.” The matted mink coat gave her an air of superiority, and her black strappy heels clacked out a slurred beat on the long marble hallway.”
― Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain

“Rain was a natural state of Glasgow. It kept the grass green and the people pale and bronchial.”
― Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain

“am in flames, yet I do not burn.” He wiped the spit from the corners of his mouth. “That’s what Saint Agnes had to teach us. How even in the darkness there is still hope.”
― Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain