Pete

“The sun was peeking over a row of beeches like a pastoral equivalent of the classic graffiti of Kilroy and his wall, and the owls of the valley had just handed the avian noise baton over to the Dawn Chorus. This morning the band, which was rapidly becoming one of my all-time favourite British ones, right up there with Led Zeppelin, Pentangle and the Stones, was working on a fuller sound: lots of new session players were chipping in and trying out new ideas, including a pheasant, the ensemble’s answer to a notoriously unreliable bagpipe player who stumbles in, still drunk from the night before, blows a couple of off-kilter notes, then leaves. Still in my pyjamas,”
― Tom Cox, 21st-Century Yokel

“A collection of Russian matryoshka dolls painted brightly in red and blue peeked out at me expectantly from one of the shelves. I couldn’t resist opening one, revealing a smaller doll inside. I opened that too, on and on until I had five dolls, each decreasing in size, all made to perfectly fit inside the largest one. It was exactly how I felt: a fully formed woman, but the little girl inside was still there.”
― Evie Woods, The Lost Bookshop

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
― Buddha Siddhartha Guatama Shakyamuni

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein