KC

“Be a mirror, she told herself again. Be a mirror when you meet a knife; be a mirror when you meet a stone.”
― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it”
― Flannery O' Connor, Wise Blood

“Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk: Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America—burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again. Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing? This time, it will swing us clean to oblivion.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

“It's a liberation to know that an act of spontaneous courage is yet possible in this world. An act that has something of unconditional beauty.”
― Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler