Tim Hart

“White people who wished to think well of themselves did not use the language of racial insult in front of black people. But the problem for us white people, as we finally had to understand, was that we could not be selectively complicit. To be complicit at all, even thoughtlessly by custom, was to be complicit in the whole extent and reach of the injustice. It is hard for customary indifference to utstick itself from the abominations to which it tacitly consents.”
― Wendell Berry, Andy Catlett: Early Travels

“The conversation thus established was a poor thing, Tol knew, so far as his own participation in it went, but it was something to go on. It gave him hope. And now I want to tell youhow this courtship, conducted for so long in secret in Tol's mind alone, became public. This is the story of Miss Minnie's first consent, the beginning of their story together, which is one of the dear possessions of the history of Port William.”
― Wendell Berry, Port William Novels & Stories (The Civil War to World War II): Nathan Coulter / Andy Catlett: Early Travels / A World Lost / A Place on Earth / Stories

“Be born then, gasp wind, screech at the surgeon’s slap, seek manhood, taste a little godhood, feel pain, give birth, struggle a little while, succumb: (Dying, leave quietly by the rear exit, please.)”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz