Ana Ulin

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“A forum full of sovereign individuals who’ve never even met in person can, by that fact, feel free to become a deeply interconnected community. Meanwhile a backwoods cult of conformity turns people inwards, to the secret thoughts and the inner strengths they cannot share with others. The more Enoch wanted Martha to become an unalienable part of his kingdom, the more he had driven her to rely only and always on herself.”
― Naomi Alderman, The Future

“When did you realize you should stop playing? There was no one moment. Moments of realization are generally seductive lies concocted by unscrupulous memoirists. Typically, the process of epiphany is not instant—your mind doesn’t just crack open. You usually realize something long after you’ve suspected that it might be true, after it’s been lurking there for a long time, in the form of an uncomfortable thought that might have been droning in the background for weeks or years, like the purr of a detuned oboe. What we call “realization” is often the death of a self-serving rationale after it’s been strangled by reality for a long time.”
― Sasha Chapin, All the Wrong Moves: A Memoir About Chess, Love, and Ruining Everything

“Luxury always comes at someone else’s expense. One of the many advantages of civilization is that one doesn’t generally have to see that, if one doesn’t wish. You’re free to enjoy its benefits without troubling your conscience.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice