Joe K.

“I stood beside the pump organ and pulled my harmonica from my pocket, and Miss Stratton and I played together the song we’d been practicing in secret. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t cry. I wanted to deliver the only gift I had to offer in the memory of Cora Frost. But as I started blowing the first notes of “Shenandoah,” the tears began to run. I played on anyway, and Miss Stratton followed, and the music itself seemed to weep and not just for what we’d lost that week. It was for the families and the childhoods and the dreams that were, even for those of us so young, already gone forever. But as I continued, I went to that place only music could take me, and although Cora Frost was dead and about to be buried along with my fleeting hope of a better life, I imagined she was listening somewhere, with her husband at her side, and they were both smiling down on me and Emmy and Albert and Mose and all the others whose lives, at least for a while, had been better because of them. And in the end, that’s where my tears were coming from.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“They still seem to like you, though,” says Rosie. “That’s because I lose,” says Ferdy. “If I’d won, they’d hate me. That’s politics.”
― Richard Osman, We Solve Murders

“Ferguson said to Poirot: “Do you think she really means that?” “Certainly.” “She prefers that pompous old bore to me?” “Undoubtedly.” “The girl’s mad,” declared Ferguson. Poirot’s eyes twinkled. “She is a woman of an original mind,” he said. “It is probably the first time you have met one.”
― Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile

“Since Blacks weren’t really allowed to purchase homes, nice cars were really the only way to show affluence and accomplishment. And the automobiles they typically purchased were large because often whole families had to sleep in them. And the powerful engines were critical, to outrun whites intent on doing them harm, including the police.”
― David Baldacci, A Calamity of Souls