Iluminada Petsche

“He had an intrusive gaze and quietly confident manner, that seemed to strip away the layers of protective deception Scott would usually adopt around strangers.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“In his student days, he used to argue that if a woman has no other course open to her but starvation, prostitution, or throwing herself from a bridge, then surely the prostitute, who has shown the most tenacious instinct for self-preservation, should be considered stronger and saner than her frailer and no longer living sisters. One couldn't have it both ways, he'd pointed out: if women are seduced and abandoned they're supposed to go mad, but if they survive, and seduce in their turn, then they were mad to begin with.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“… Some of my friends will never return, for they died on this the most extraordinary trek in history – a trek that caused untold suffering to thousands of people of many nationalities … from ‘Out of the Burma Night’ by Captain Gribble”
― Elizabeth Tebby Germaine, EXTRAORDINARY TRUE STORIES OF SURVIVAL IN BURMA WW2: tens of thousands fled to India from the Japanese Invasion in 1942

“The catcher in the rye... that's all I really want to be...”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye