Karen

“No: these are the complaints of small landowners, and men who don't like to pay their taxes. Men who want to be petty kings in their shires, who want the women to curtsey as they pass through the marketplace. I know these paltry gods, he thinks. We had them in Putney. They have them everywhere.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“In the end, if you change the enemy enough, if you wear them down, perhaps losing is good enough.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Dead Astronauts

“She refuses to look at La Conquistadora, the wooden statue of the Blessed Mother tucked high and snug in an opulent niche in her chapel to the left of the altar. The conquistadors brought her from Spain, hauled her around with them like a lucky charm as they invaded the peoples of the New World, and she served as a placid, unmoved witness to the violence they wrought. No wonder the Spaniards loved her so: O Conquistadora, Our Lady of the Rosary, Blessed Mother, Adoring Mother, Our Mother of Excuses and Turning a Blind Eye, Our Lady of Willful Ignorance and Boys Will Be Boys, Our Lady of Endless, Long-Suffering Hope.”
― Kirstin Valdez Quade, The Five Wounds

“He thought about treason and wondered whether there was mindless treason in the same way, supposedly, as there was mindless violence.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy