Sook Quesnell

“underlings, was, by his own account, in the boat ‘seeking pleasure with young boys’. Big Chief Chen turned out to be a protégé of Prince Chun. After Chen was exposed, the prince wrote repeatedly to Cixi, telling her that ‘I am extremely fond of this man and intend to use him for our cause against foreign barbarians.’ Chen must be well treated, as all men of ideals in the empire would be watching what happened to him and would see whether the throne had any serious desire to ‘avenge the country’. The mob must be ‘encouraged’, not punished, warned the prince. It was obvious that Chen had instigated the riot, and behind him stood Prince Chun. It also became clear to Cixi that Prince Chun had intended the whole country to do as Tianjin did. During the massacre and its aftermath, unrest rippled throughout the empire, with the same eyes-and-hearts rumour circulating about the missionaries. In some places, posters were put up in the streets announcing that on a specified day all must come out to slaughter foreigners and destroy churches. Riots, though on a smaller scale, broke out in a number of cities.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

“He was justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.”
― Jack London

“-Aquí pasa como poco antes del treinta y tres, cuando los rojos y los pardos se unieron contra nosotros, hasta que luego los pardos liquidaron primero a los rojos e inmediatamente después nos llegó el turno a nosotros. Y así desapareció la solidaridad. Bueno, ésos no aprenden nunca de la historia. Quieren siempre todo o nada. A los sociatas nos odian porque, si hace falta, nos conformamos también con la mitad”
― Günter Grass, Peeling the Onion

“Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old fillms, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to death.”
― Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991