Alex Baysinger

“And, certainly to him Life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating--people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“To really touch something, she is learning—the bark of a sycamore tree in the gardens; a pinned stag beetle in the Department of Etymology; the exquisitely polished interior of a scallop shell in Dr. Geffard’s workshop—is to love it.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“War is always a negative-sum outcome. It subtracts, removes, empties. No one who has witnessed combat can, with any honesty, describe it another way. “We know more about war than we know about peace,” said five-star general Omar Bradley in an Armistice Day address a few years after the end of World War II, “more about killing than we know about living.” Think of it like this. For every soldier’s grave in places such as Arlington or Anzio or Normandy, there are more forgotten burial sites for civilians—parents, children, newlyweds, and newborns—claimed in some way by the same fighting.”
― Brian Murphy, 81 Days Below Zero: The Incredible Survival Story of a World War II Pilot in Alaska's Frozen Wilderness