Dorthey Benes

“The Vietnamese soldier said, “Before I spoke to her, I had given her a cooked ration of rice. Instead of her being grateful for the meal, she abused me! What gives with these Kampuchean People?”
― Michael G. Kramer, A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume One

“Appalled at his own voice, he wondered why he couldn’t have said he was a social worker or a hospital executive. Would the kids have cared? Why was he spilling his guts instead? Did he think it might make him more interesting in Epstein’s eyes? But what was “interesting” about having been a mental patient? “—anyway, I was locked up there,” he concluded, and he wondered if Pamela and the others were embarrassed for him.”
― Richard Yates, Disturbing the Peace: A Novel

“But this Scroll too has magical properties. From the moment I first saw it, the paper warmed to my touch. I know it came alive as I held it. Did you know there’s a serpent on the back? Some say it’s a dragon. It winked at me. Its lashes are gold.”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“It was our understanding that we were to be instructing them in the ways of the civilized world, not being made beasts of burden, but, as Helen Flight has pointed out, of what use are table manners to those without tables.”
― Jim Fergus, One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd