Britni Pilson

“bear in mind that this time around it was impossible to become a senior officer by merit alone; it was done by browning the tongue.”
― Louis de Bernières, Corelli's Mandolin

“that's the funny thing about mazes: what's baffling on the ground begins to makes sense when you can begin to rise above it, the better to understand your history and fix yourself". (p. 717)”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“Don't leave me here alone! It's your Sam calling. Don't go where I can't follow! Wake up, Mr. Frodo!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

“Why should we hate them? Because ours is the only true civilization! Even in science -- consider that we invented the sternpost rudder twelve hundred years before the Europeans did! Fore-and-aft sails in the third century! Treadmill paddle wheel for boats five hundred years later! Warships with rams and twenty paddle wheels by the twelfth century -- the British thought we had copied theirs, the fools! In the thirteenth century we had ships with fifty cabins for passengers, six-masts, double planking, water-tight compartments! Only in the last century did the barbarians even have transverse bulkheads! Five hundred years ago we already had ships four hundred and fifty feet long, and we grew fresh vegetables aboard in tubs! WE sailed the high seas to Sumatra and India, to Aden and Africa and even to Madagascar -- sixty years before the Portuguese bit a piece from the thigh of India! I curse Confucius and all those mad saints who persuaded us against war! Did you ever hear of Sun Wa, who lived three thousand years ago? No? Read the Art of War! 'If you are not in danger, do not fight,' he wrote. Now we are in danger!”
― Pearl S. Buck, Three Daughters of Madame Liang