matthew

“You are summoned for no reason other than that you are a Jew, as if "Jew" were a mass term comparable, say, to "water" or "salt." Here is a bit of water, we say, and any sample of it will do. All water manifests itself the same interchangeable water properties. That a Nazi should think this way about Jews is not in the least surprising. Mass terms, mass murders, mass graves: they are all of a piece.”
― Rebecca Goldstein, The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness

“But, unfortunately, the injured in this case (six million martyred dead) are incapable of exercising such prerogative or indeed if expressing any opinion at all.

And if the dead can’t forgive, neither can the living.”
― Mark Goulden, The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness

“Robin's mind was oddly blank, as it had been sometimes at the end of a particularly fiendish examination, as if he'd scooped out its worthwhile contents with his fingers and smeared them grimly onto the page. The last time he'd felt this way was when he found out that his parents were dead. Instead of surprise, this. An exhausted, wrung-out space.”
― Freya Marske, A Marvellous Light

“The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success