John

“Mary Jo Godwin, former editor of the late Wilson Library Bulletin, once wrote: "A truly great library has something in it to offend everyone." But libraries don't buy books in order to offend. We buy them to support our community. It surprises some people that not everyone wants the same thing.”
― James LaRue, On Censorship: A Public Librarian Examines Cancel Culture in the US

“Until lately the West has regarded it as self-evident that the road to education lay through great books. No man was educated unless he was acquainted with the masterpieces of his tradition. There never was very much doubt in anybody’s mind about which the masterpieces were. They were the books that had endured and that the common voice of mankind called the finest creations, in writing, of the Western mind.”
― Robert Maynard Hutchins, The Great Conversation: The Substance Of A Liberal Education

“I scrubbed in the water while Ellie Mae chased a jackrabbit that was wandering on the shore. She nearly caught the rabbit, but the rabbit called for reinforcements. Soon nearly eighty rabbits emerged from the brush and began chasing my dog across the Texas plains. These were not rabbits like we have in Florida. Some of these were carrying tomahawks, and a few were on horseback.”
― Sean Dietrich , Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: A Memoir of Learning to Believe You’re Gonna Be Okay

“For some people, the transition to adulthood happens almost overnight. It certainly did with me. I’ve met other orphans. We are kids who can’t even pinpoint when this change happened. We have felt like old people since our fathers died.
Our mothers looked to us for big decisions. They relied on us. Before we ever went out on our first date, we were already acting like a retired father of four. All our paychecks went toward rent. All our spare time went toward helping to keep a home fire burning.
We got so good at pretending we were older than our age that we started to believe it. We begin to hate our own reflections because they betray how we see ourselves. The mirror portrays us too young. We are not children; we are ancient. We’re fifty years old thirty-five years before our fiftieth birthday.”
― Sean Dietrich, Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: A Memoir of Learning to Believe You’re Gonna Be Okay