In order to be true to your hopes, your ambitions, your beliefs, your dreams, you had to be a hero twenty-four hours a day. And nobody can do this.
Rainer Eppelman, quoted in The quiet German: the astonishing rise of Angela Merkel by George Packer, The New Yorker
Marry me — and I will conquer the world and lay it at your feet.
Winston Churchill to Pamela Plowden, 1899
You make an effort to appear conventional, but I know, Watson, you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the humdrum routine of ordinary life.
Sherlock Holmes to Joan Watson, Elementary
Screw your courage to the sticking place.
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
In America, you don’t get to decide what race you are. It is decided for you.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
secretive dreams 