Autumn

“CHORUS: Helen! wild mad Helen
you murdered so many beneath Troy.
Now you’ve crowned yourself one final perfect time,
a crown of blood that will not wash away.
Strife walks with you everywhere you go.

KLYTAIMESTRA: Oh, stop whining.
And why get angry at Helen?
As if she singlehandedly destroyed those multitudes of men.
As if she all alone made this wound in us”
― Anne Carson, The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides

“I’ll tell you what, Howard said, you only need to know one thing. Something ol’ Forrest knows. That’s you gotta hit first, hit with everythin’ you got, and then keep hittin’ until the man is down, and then you hit him some more. Jack nodded. Many men, Howard said, like the idea of fightin’ but very few likes to get hit. You can make a man wanna quit real quick with that first shot. A good straight left into the nose bone and most will let it be. A man who likes to get hit is the one to watch out for.”
― Matt Bondurant, The Wettest County in the World: A Novel Based on a True Story

“The constant assertion of masculinity is always the most obvious tell of a fake. You do not constantly assert what you know you have.”
― Matt Bondurant, The Wettest County in the World: A Novel Based on a True Story

“Some folks, he said, seem to want to seek out the things that destroy them. Called an achimist, a fancy word, but a true one.”
― Matt Bondurant, The Wettest County in the World: A Novel Based on a True Story