Madeleine

“Listen, days decay, like food, like fish,
like dead bodies. This night will decay, too and you will forget. Listen, we will forget.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“Everything we know of horror and dread is connected primarily with war. Stalin's Gulags and Auschwitz were recent gains for evil. History has always been the story of wars and military commanders, and war was, we could say, the yardstick of horror. This is why people muddle the concepts of war and disaster. In Chernobyl, we see all the hallmarks of war: hordes of soldiers, evacuation, abandoned houses. The course of life disrupted. Reports on Chernobyl in the newspapers are thick with the language of war: 'nuclear', 'explosion', 'heroes'. And this makes it harder to appreciate that we now find ourselves on a new page of history. The history of disasters has begun. But people do not want to reflect on that, because they have never thought about it before, preferring to take refuge in the familiar. And in the past. Even the monuments to the Chernobyl heroes look like war memorials.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“It would never wholly leave her, the vertigo of this moment; it would be with her for the rest of her life, and it would always be mingled inextricably with the dim toolshed—shiny metal sawteeth, the smells of dust and gasoline—and three dead Englishmen beneath a cairn of snow with icicles glittering in their hair. Amnesia: ice floes, violent distances, the body turned to stone. The horror of all bodies.

"Come on," said Hely, with a toss of his head. "Let's get out of here."

"I'm coming," said Harriet. Her heart was pounding, and she felt breathless—not with the breathlessness of fear, but with something very close to rage,”
― Donna Tartt, The Little Friend

“It is a terrible thing, this kindness that human beings do not lose. Terrible, because when we are finally naked in the dark and cold, it is all we have. We who are so rich, so full of strength, we end up with that small change.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness