Emma

“And could you not make a cameo of this and pin it onto your aesthetic hearts?”
― Tillie Olsen, Yonnondio: From the Thirties

“What are you watching? Is it comforting? I don’t have the bandwidth to give a fuck about anything not comforting to me most of the time. I know that’s “uncultured,” but also I don’t care because who are you, person challenging me? I want to watch Veep before bed because it makes me laugh, and I want to watch true crime documentaries, and I want to watch British actors in terrific costumes battling through emotions they weren’t even aware they had. That’s all. I’m tired. Find your comforting shit. Build your mental fort and hang out there.”
― Anne T. Donahue, Nobody Cares

“The flayed landscape of the western prairie does little to remind the people who live there of the covenant of works or the covenant or grace. The sky, visible right down to the horizon, has a diminishing effect upon everything in the foreground, and the distance is as featureless and remote as the possibility of punishment for slander. The roads run straight, with death and old age intersecting at right angles, and the harvest is stored in cemeteries.”
― William Maxwell, Time Will Darken It

“Because around a crisis point, even the tiniest action can assume importance all out of proportion to its size. Consequences multiply and cascade, and anything—a missed telephone call, a match struck during a blackout, a dropped piece of paper, a single moment—can have empire-tottering effects. The Archduke Ferdinand’s chauffeur makes a wrong turn onto Franz-Josef Street and starts a world war. Abraham Lincoln’s bodyguard steps outside for a smoke and destroys a peace. Hitler leaves orders not to be disturbed because he has a migraine and finds out about the D-Day invasion eighteen hours too late. A lieutenant fails to mark a telegram “urgent” and Admiral Kimmel isn’t warned of the impending Japanese attack. “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost.”
― Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog