Kari Francese

“I imagined myself a bird, looking down on our city, the Grand Canal like a snake slithering through stone, the city on either side like two hands clasped in prayer”
― Gina Buonaguro, The Virgins of Venice

“one crucial fact must be kept in mind: none of the roughly seventy thousand nuclear weapons built by the United States since 1945 has ever detonated inadvertently or without proper authorization. The technological and administrative controls on those weapons have worked, however imperfectly at times—and countless people, military and civilian, deserve credit for that remarkable achievement. Had a single weapon been stolen or detonated, America’s command-and-control system would still have attained a success rate of 99.99857 percent. But nuclear weapons are the most dangerous technology ever invented. Anything less than 100 percent control of them, anything less than perfect safety and security, would be unacceptable. And if this book has any message to preach, it is that human beings are imperfect.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“that the infection was propagated insensibly, and by such persons as were not visibly infected, who neither knew whom they infected or who they were infected by.”
― Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year

“You don’t much think it did,” said Alvin Hooks. “Your opinion is otherwise, it appears. But on what do you base your opinion, sir? You have not denied that my scenario is plausible. You have not denied that this premeditated murder might have happened in precisely the fashion I have just described, have you, Mr. Gillanders—have you?” “No, I haven’t,” Josiah said. “But—” “No further questions,” said Alvin Hooks.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars