"Nothing fails like success."

“I am not going to sit here and say I am never going to drink again. That is not realistic.”

“Though I later found a career as a journalist and an essayist, fiction is my first love and I never left it, even though there was no easy way to make a living from it.”

Source : "‘Birds of Paradise Lost’: A Conversation With Author Andrew Lam". Interview with Anna Challet, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 5, 2013.

“The danger is to stupidly believe that depicting facts gives us much insight. If facts were the only thing that counted, the telephone directory would be the book of books.”

“It's a vicious cycle. It's like a washing machine with the lid jammed down. -Christina Kratovac (pg 53)”

“Rebellions of the belly are the worst.”

“Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.”

Source : "On Israel Flattening Beirut: There is Nothing New Under the Sun" by Halim Shebaya, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 25, 2016.

“Victorian values meant brutalizing people who were often poor.”

“And so she comes to dream herself the tree, The wind possessing her, weaving her young veins, Holding her to the sky and its quick blue, Drowning the fever of her hands in sunlight. She has no memory, nor fear, nor hope Beyond the grass and shadows at her feet.”

Source : Hart Crane (1966). “The complete poems and selected letters and prose of Hart Crane”, Anchor