Ellen Marcolongo

“The popularity among professional ball players was so great that Hot Springs eventually became the official spring training location for a number of major- and minor-league teams, including the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Boston Red Sox, and the Pittsburgh Pirates.”
― David Hill, The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice

“Throughout its history, the United States has always had a class system. It is not only directed by the top 1 percent and supported by a contented middle class. We can no longer ignore the stagnant, expendable bottom layers of society in explaining the national identity.”
― Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

“Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person in the world was working to get what they needed. For most, it was a sense of safety, in the sea of terror that life increasingly became. People thought love would do it, and maybe it did.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young, firm ones, that love was not to be tossed away carelessly, as if it were a tart on a platter with others that got passed around again. No, if love was available, one chose it, or didn’t choose it. And if her platter had been full with the goodness of Henry and she had found it burdensome, had flicked it off crumbs at a time, it was because she had not known what one should know: that day after day was unconsciously squandered.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge