Mary

“When a federal court upholds a law that literally makes it a crime to give a child a cup of water in the desert; when Immigrants and Customs Enforcement abducts a child at an airport in order to force the (undocumented) parents to turn themselves in; when Border Patrol shoots people at the Mexican border with tear gas; that's the reactionary response to a warming world. It is a much simpler and more satisfying response than regulating energy companies or taxing carbon. It only has two problems. It is evil, and it will result in, if nothing else, the end of this country. People who want to live in such a world are already too querulous to make a society, even with each other, even if they get everything they want. Picture them trying to manage a baking earth, an evaporating Lake Superior riddled with Asian carp, a countryside full of feral bacteria and reeking of CAFOs that produce less food every year. It won't work. A fully achieved Fortress America would just be the Donner Party a day or two before the cannibalism starts.”
― Phil Christman, Midwest Futures

“We need a world that insists upon safety and dignity for all of us—not because we are beautiful, healthy, blameless, exceptional, or beyond reproach, but because we are human beings.”
― Aubrey Gordon, What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat

“It is difficult to rid yourself, in only a few weeks, of thirty or forty years of private belief that the world is a good place. With our rooted ideas of justice, we believed in the existence of a German, a European, an international conscience, and we were convinced that a certain degree of inhumanity is sure to self-destruct in the face of humane standards.”
― Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday

“...it's not surprising that Charlotte wants me to be the mother for her now. I can be the "normal" parent who safely and lovingly drives the car, and she can have the experience of being taken care of in a way she never has before. But in order to cast me in the competent role, Charlotte believes she has to cast herself as the helpless one, letting me see only her problems -- or, as Wendell once put it in relation to what I do with him: "seduce me with her misery." Patients often do this as a way to ensure that the therapist won't forget about their pain if they mention something positive.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed