Olivia Ostler

“Just as people tailor their stories to serve their interests - revising, erasing, embroidering - so do nations. After all the grim and troubling narratives about the Wager disaster, and after all the death and destruction, the empire had finally found its mythic tale of the sea.”
― David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

“Modern man is a prisoner who thinks he is free because he refrains from touching the walls of his dungeon.”
― Nicolás Gómez Dávila, Escolios a Un Texto Implicito: Obra Completa