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

“Why do people see no harm in having children? They do it with smiles on their faces, as if it’s not an act of violence. You force this other being into the world, this other being that never asked to be born. You do this absurd thing because that’s what you want for yourself, and that doesn’t make any sense.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs

“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