Karyn Bartkiewicz

“This world would be a pleasant place if people didn’t inhabit it.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“It seemed to Jack that if an ordinary human being, his own son, no one particular, could have this purity of mind, then perhaps the isolated deeds of virtue at which people marveled in later life were not really isolated at all; perhaps they were the natural continuation of the innocent goodness that all people brought into the world at their birth. If this was true, then his fellow-human beings were not the rough, flawed creatures that most of them supposed. Their failings were not innate, but were the result of where they had gone wrong or been coarsened by their experiences; in their hearts they remained perfectible.”
― Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong

“If you can't do, you had best shut up. He started to slam the door, thought better of it. If you can't do, you'd best not slam doors.”
― Esther Forbes, Johnny Tremain

“Like water around rocks, people streamed around them as though this sort of interaction, noisy and involving foreigners, was nothing unusual.”
― Sara Pascoe, Being a Witch, and Other Things I Didn't Ask For