Colleen

“Mr. President,” Milley said, “there are two hundred seventy-six cities in America with over one hundred thousand people in them. We track this all the time.” In the last twenty-four hours, Milley said, there were only two cities with violent protests so large that local authorities might have needed reinforcements. Otherwise, he said, “there was some vandalism and some rioting, but they were handled by local police.” Then he turned back to Miller. “Stephen, that’s not burning the country down,” he said.”
― Carol Leonnig, I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year

“Those who spend the greater part of their time in reading or writing books are, of course, apt to take rather particular notice of accumulations of books when they come across them. They will not pass a stall, a shop, or even a bedroom-shelf without reading some title, and if they find themselves in an unfamiliar library, no host need trouble himself further about their entertainment. The putting of dispersed sets of volumes together, or the turning right way up of those which the dusting housemaid has left in an apoplectic condition, appeals to them as one of the lesser Works of Mercy. Happy in these employments, and in occasionally opening an eighteenth-century octavo, to see 'what it is all about,' and to conclude after five minutes that it deserves the seclusion it now enjoys, I had reached the middle of a wet August afternoon at Betton Court...

-the beginning of the story "A Neighbor's Landmark”
― M.R. James, A Warning to the Curious: Ghost Stories

“History may well be a series of stories we tell about the past, but the stories are not just any stories. They're not chosen by chance. By and large, the stories are about famous men and celebrated events. We throw in a couple of exceptional women every now and then, not out of any need to recognize female eminence, but out of embarrassment.”
― Thomas King, The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America

“Do your bit to save humanity from lapsing back into barbarity by reading all the novels you can.”
― Richard Hughes