Christine

“...as the Covid-19 pandemic burns through us, our world is passing through a portal. We have journeyed to a place from which it looks unlikely that we can return, at least not without some kind of serious rupture from the past - social, political, economic and ideological.... Coronavirus has brought with it another, more terrible understanding of Azadi: the Free virus that has made nonsense of international borders, incarcerated whole populations and brought the modern world to a halt like nothing else ever could. It casts a different light on the lives we have lived so far. It forces us to question the values we have built modern societies on - what we have chosen to worship and what to cast aside. As we pass through this portal into another kind of world, we will have to ask ourselves what we want to take with us and what we will leave behind. We may not always have a choice - but not thinking about it will not be an option. And in order to think about it, we need an even deeper understanding of the world gone by, of the devastation we have caused to our planet and the deep injustice between fellow human beings that we have come to accept.”
― Arundhati Roy, Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction.

“But here: I just want you to know that I'm not going to try to trick you into thinking there's no evil in the world. Because there is. This world sometimes seems like it's full of incomprehensible, unintelligible, unembraceable, inexorable evil. Violence and injustice and greed and blind rage.

But it's also full of all that other stuff. The small things. Kindness between strangers. Love at first sight. Loyalty and friendship. Someone's hand in yours on a Sunday afternoon. Two brothers reconciled. Heroes who stand up when no one else dares. A fiftysomething man in a Saab who slows down when he sees your turn signal and lets you into his lane during rush hour. Summer nights. Children's laughter. Cheesecake.

And all you can do is decide which side you want to be on. Which pile you want to contribute to.”
― Fredrik Backman, Things My Son Needs to Know About the World

“When my mother was near death at age ninety she told me that she was ready to die but could not. “You and Jim need me,” she said. My brother and I were by then in our sixties.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

“Why did I look like this, when in my head I looked completely different? Who was that woman with the grey hair and the wrinkles? I didn’t have either of those things, when had that happened?”
― Maddie Please, Old Friends Reunited