Michael Whiteway

“Even humble comic books could not escape the new puritanism. In 1952, comics were removed from the on-board bookshops of the US Pacific Fleet, on the grounds that they were too violent and graphic for marines and sailors.”
― Andrew Pettegree, The Book at War: Libraries and Readers in an Age of Conflict

“His mother did love him; it was just that she didn’t understand him.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Librarianist

“The world has never been fair, and cannot be made fair, and claims that it can are foolish or dishonest. It can be made fairer and attempts to make it less fair can be resisted. Optimistic realists seek improvement, not perfection.”
― David Mitchell, Unruly: A History of England’s Kings and Queens

“On Fifth Avenue I went into the Trump Tower, a new skyscraper. A guy named Donald Trump, a developer, is slowly taking over New York, building skyscrapers all over town with his name on them, so I went in and had a look around. The building had the most tasteless lobby I had ever seen-all brass and chrome and blotchy red and white marble that looked like the sort of thing that if you saw it on the sidewalk you would walk around it. Here it was everywhere on the floors, up the walls, on the ceiling. It was like being inside somebody's stomach after he'd eaten pizza. "Incredible," I muttered and walked on.”
― Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America