Brendan

“they’re teaching us that the real Catholic belief about Mary is that she got pregnant through her ear—that “Just as Eve listened to Satan and gave birth to sin, so Mary listened to Gabriel and became pregnant with the Son of God.”
― Kathleen Zamboni McCormick, Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian, Sometimes Awesome, But Mostly Creepy, Childhood

“No number has ever done it for us. Not a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand. Even millions don't do it, and so every single year we pay our legislators to come up with more. But no matter how many prohibitions we come up with, they never do the trick, because no prohibited behavior has ever been eliminated by passing a law against it. Every time someone is sent to prison or executed, this is said to be "sending a message" to miscreants, but for some strange reason the message never arrives, year after year, generation after generation, century after century.

Naturally, we consider this to be a very advanced system.”
― Daniel Quinn, If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways

“If the Agency could become a container for something neither Anna nor Mary had known before: a family. Now, without Caroline depending on her, Anna was alone. It did not taste good. There were voices inside: I am risking everything; I could lose everything.”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“The money we spend to help you is really to help ourselves. We invest in you because you will do great things, and we want to be part of it.”
― Steven Decker, Projector for Sale