Joy

“country that doesn’t grow its own wine grapes has no claim to civilisation.”
― Kerry Greenwood, Death Before Wicket

“Mind you, I still believe in democracy. But you’ve got to force it on people with a strong hand—ram it down their throats. Men don’t want to be brothers—they may some day, but they don’t now. My belief in the brotherhood of man died the day I arrived in London last week, when I observed people standing in a Tube train resolutely refuse to move up and make room for those who entered. You won’t turn people into angels by appealing to their better natures just yet awhile—but by judicious force you can coerce them into behaving more or less decently to one another to go on with. I still believe in the brotherhood of man, but it’s not coming yet awhile. Say another ten thousand years or so. It’s no good being impatient. Evolution is a slow process.”
― Agatha Christie, AGATHA CHRISTIE Premium Collection: The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Secret Adversary, The Murder on the Links, The Cornish Mystery, Hercule Poirot's Cases

“Ask any cat and they’ll tell you: art is not a thing you hang on a wall. It is an experience, it is life. Art is the perfectly timed leap in the air to catch a trespassing moth. Art is the stream of sunbeams filtering in through the trees that both warms your fur and provides a camouflaging pattern across your body. Art is the precisely chosen angle and pressure of your human’s fingers executing a flawless scratch beneath your chin. But, I suppose if you simply must have a physical piece of art in your possession to fulfill some sort of human need to own and hoard, then adopt a cat. Or two. Or three. Or ten. We are art embodied, poetry in motion, perfection distilled into physical form.”
― Lydia Sherrer, Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Cat Mischief

“The newspapers of today chronicle with degrading avidity the sins of the second-rate, and with the conscientiousness of the illiterate give us accurate and prosaic details of the doings of people of absolutely no interest whatever. I must give them up.”
― Gyles Brandreth, Oscar Wilde and a Game Called Murder: A Mystery