Alan Mills

“Mr. Gowan drew himself still straighter than his normal upright posture, braced both thumbs in the waist of his breeks, and prepared with all the romanticism of his aged, gallant heart to do battle, fighting with the law’s chosen weapon of excruciating boredom.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Outlander

“The telegraph kept this all moving fast. The whole transaction between Wheeling and Washington took place in a matter of hours, and could have done so if the ends were San Francisco and Washington. So now, of course, a man could make a stupid decision much faster. So Hayes’s natural caution made sense.”
― Cecelia Holland, Blood on the Tracks

“up and up under our treads. I thought, shivering, that there are things that outweigh comfort, unless one is an old woman or a cat.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“Punishing and imprisoning the poor is the distinctively American response to poverty in the twenty-first century. Workers who cannot pay their debts, those who cannot afford private probation services, minorities targeted for traffic infractions, the homeless, the mentally ill, fathers who cannot pay child support and many others are all locked up. Mass incarceration is used to make social problems temporarily invisible and to create the mirage of something having been done.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope