Karen

“A constant factor in human history is the need to protect oneself. Another factor is the urge to attack someone else.”
― Stan Beckensall, Coastal Castles of Northumberland

“Dimly, he remembered a view of Syon House on the other side of the river. He knew of someone who had held their wedding reception there, their wedding breakfast. The idea of a wedding breakfast seemed enchanting to him. He thought of Melody; a throng of people, the ghosts of his past, were the guests. And he saw it at last, farther away than he had thought, like a house painted onto the backdrop of a stage in muted colours. Was this why he had come? The lion on the ramparts reminded him of himself and his own inadequacies and his mane tied down. He veered off through the trees in the direction that the wind seemed to blow him. The leaves of eucalyptus, oak and pine roared at him behind his back.”
― Katharine Davies, The Madness of Love

“It requires conducive social conditions rather than monstrous people to produce atrocious deeds. Given appropriate social conditions, decent, ordinary people can do extraordinarily cruel things.”
― Kat Banyard, Pimp State: Sex, Money and the Future of Equality

“you like babies, don't you? he asked...

I have a marginally higher opinion of them than Herod, she said.”
― Jill McGown, Murder at the Old Vicarage