Katrina

“Just spunk won't be enough; you've got to have gumption. You've got to bear it in mind that nobody that ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice. You've got to keep your mind off of pitying your own rotten luck and setting up any kind of howl about it. You've got to remember that things as bad as this and a hell of a lot worse have happened to millions of people before and that they've come through it and you can too. You'll bear it because there isn't any choice--except to go to pieces. . . It's kind of a test, Mary, and it's the only kind that amounts to anything. When something rotten like this happens. Then you have your choice. You start to really be alive, or you start to die. That's all.”
― James Agee , A Death in the Family

“It is never too late to be wise.”
― Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

“In what became known as the decade of lies, truth and trust were falling victim to fear, racism, and hatred. Virginia found herself in a ringside seat as the increasingly fragile ideal of democracy failed to find champions with alternative answers”
― Sonia Purnell, A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

“She gambled again and again with her own life, not out of a fervent nationalism for her own country, but out of love and respect for the freedoms of another.”
― Sonia Purnell, A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II