Quotes by Ashim Shanker

“What are the units of ontology really that I should be a part of a whole, but not be, in all my awareness, chiefly the whole unto itself?”

“Perhaps, there is no such person who can be called truly free, but only those who can be deemed so by comparison.”

“Human freedom brings with it the burden of choice and of its consequences. As humankind is akin to claim for its own special privilege a certain unique destiny not afforded with equal measure to ot...”

“A bracing wind swirls about the boy and alights gently upon his shoulder to gape frightfully at droplets of fate joined infirmly to a sweep of atmospheric and lunar forces far beyond their capabili...”

“I feel as though dispossessed from the semblances of some crystalline reality to which Id grown accustomed, and to some degree, had engaged in as a participant, but to which I had, nevertheless, gr...”

“Writing creatively is a process of self-consumption that requires one to dive deeply inside of oneself with no guarantee of reemergence.”

“Bunnu was no amateur when it came to escape. And even in his drowsiest moments, he understood implicitly that to forget his circumstances, even for a short while, meant first to forget himself. Who...”

“The lights became stars, which became streaks in the grayspace, and then networks of fading shimmers”

“Light and Dark: each was unaware that the other existed.”

“At one moment, his eyes sparkled in the light and in the next they were enshrouded in shadow. What connected those bands of light and dark? Could they indeed have been distinct entities?”

“The arrow of time obscures memory of both past and future circumstance with innumerable fallacies, the least trivial of which is perception.”

“Of what use was memory anyway than as a template for one's most reassuring self-deceptions!”

“Here in Alpha City, we have a common saying: What we call sky is merely a figment of our narrative. The most dreamy-eyed among us seem to adorn themselves and their aspirations in that proverb and ...”

“Each form is inadequate, like a graft to be rejected by its intractable and unrelenting host and thus can only serve a brief and momentary purpose coherent to a context rooted in contiguous reason....”

“Doubt has become the veritable wellspring of my creative process and my philosophic explorations. It has equipped me with the temerity and wherewithal to question certain truths deemed fundamental ...”

“His hatred for all was so intense that it should extinguish the very love from which it was conceived. And thus, he ceased to feel. There was nothing further in which to believe that made the prosp...”

“He remembered a version of himself untrammeled by expectation, unimpeded by Ego. He had suffered in the many years since then, seeking to return to that original self, if, in fact, it ever existed....”

“All high mathematics serves to do is to beget higher mathematics.”

“But what is identity really? What is it to belong when we cast ourselves in the mold of a social group? I ask this, in spite of my implicit allegiance to one; yet, it is a worthwhile question. I me...”

“It would be both foolish and cumbersome to continue our everyday existences in bliss without first denying to ourselves, for the sake of excusing our own repugnance, the inherent cruelty from which...”