Jerry B

“All say, ‘how hard it is that we have to die’ -- a strange complaint to come from the mouths of those who have had to live.”
― Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson

“But he still lingered, feeling the wind lift his hair and grateful for another minute of peace. He was grateful, too, that Kate Miskin could share it with him without the need to speak and without making him feel that her silence was a conscious discipline. He had chosen her because he needed a woman in his team and she was the best available. The choice had been partly rational, partly instinctive and he was beginning to realize just how well his instinct had served him. It would have been dishonest to say that there was no hint of sexuality between them. In his experience there nearly always was, however repudiated or unacknowledged, between any reasonable attractive heterosexual couple who worked together. He wouldn’t have chosen her if he had found her disturbingly attractive but the attraction was there and he wasn’t immune to it. But despite this pinprick of sexuality, perhaps because of it, he found her surprisingly restful to work with. She had an instinctive knowledge of what he wanted; she knew when to be silent; she wasn’t overly deferential. He suspected that with part of her mind, she saw his vulnerabilities more clearly, and understood him better and was more judgmental than were any of his male colleagues.

{ by Adam Dalgliesh, of his teammate Kate Miskin }”
― P.D. James, A Taste for Death

“Men have called me mad; but the question is not settled whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence -- whether much that is glorious -- whether all that is profound -- does not spring from disease of thought -- from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who only dream by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however rudderless or compassless, into the vast ocean of the ‘light ineffable’.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora

“Brother Clarence had wanted her to take over as song leader, and she had turned it down. If what she was hearing from the speakers was the direction the church was going in, it was just as well. She was forty-two, and she knew every generation thought their music was better than the next generation’s music, but this truly was garbage. Absolute garbage. Sugary ballads to Jesus, crowing anthems, trance inducing chorus repetitions. And why exactly did DeWayne need a ten-person praise team on stage all singing the melody?”
― Tammy Oberhausen, The Evolution of the Gospelettes