Katrina

“Resistance called for a lonely courage, for men and women who could fight on their own. But the solitude was an eternal strain”
― Sonia Purnell, A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

“We do ourselves no favors by pretending American history is either cheerfully grand or unrelievedly bleak, for American history is a human undertaking and is as subject to selfishness and greed, to cruelty and injustice, as we are in our own lives. Yet it is also true that the United States of America has grown stronger, freer, and more just when it has opened its arms rather then clenched its fists; built bridges, not walls; and understood that the promise of the Declaration of Independence includes not some but all.”
― Jon Meacham, American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union: An Anthology

“the lesson of American history is that we’re at our best when we at least agree on the facts at hand, on the efficacy of compromise, and on the legitimacy of our institutions.”
― Jon Meacham, American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union: An Anthology

“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