Patrick Slavin

“If the global temperature rises by 4°C over the next fifty years, as is evidently possible, the whole of the Appalachian wilderness below New England could become savanna. Already trees are dying in frightening numbers. The elms and chestnuts are long gone, the stately hemlocks and flowery dogwoods are going, and the red spruces, Fraser firs, mountain ashes, and sugar maples may be about to follow. Clearly, if ever there was a time to experience this singular wilderness, it was now.”
― Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

“(It was said that Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister, spoke only four words of English: “Yes,” “No,” and “Second front.”) Moscow”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“Before I could assume my official functions, I was required to present my credentials to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.* For reasons I cannot now fathom, I chose to wear a striped sundress that exposed both too much shoulder and too much leg. Upon seeing the official photo of me with the secretary-general, the French Ambassador to the UN, Gérard Araud, would later ask mischievously, “You wore your swim suit to present credentials?”
― Samantha Power, The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir

“Imagine this struggle being repeated in every barracks of the city, the district, the whole front, all Russia. Imagine the sleepless Krylenkos, watching the regiments, hurrying from place to place, arguing, threatening, entreating. And then imaging the same in all the locals of every labour union, in the factories, the villages, on the battle-ships of the far-flung Russian fleets; think of the hundreds of thousands of Russian men staring up at speakers all over the vast country, workmen, peasants, soldiers, sailors, trying so hard to understand and to choose, thinking so intensely-and deciding so unanimously at the end. So was the Russian Revolution….”
― John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World