John Varner

“bitter recognition that his era had passed and the injury he had done to his family could not be undone and the moral failure that characterized his life had poisoned everything he touched and saw.”
― C.J. Box, The Best American Mystery Stories 2020

“I try to avoid confrontations with white trash, but sometimes they don’t give you no selection.”
― C.J. Box, The Best American Mystery Stories 2020

“Gutenberg’s invention in the fifteenth century set off a “round of teeth gnashing” among early humanists, who worried that “printed books and broadsheets would undermine religious authority, demean the work of scholars and scribes, and spread sedition and debauchery.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters

“Maybe conversations and arguments fail because one—or both—of the parties is just stupid. These are fighting words. No one likes to be called stupid: it’s a judgmental, harsh word that implies not only a lack of intelligence, but a willful ignorance almost to the point of moral failure. (I have used it, more than I should. So have you, most likely.)”
― Thomas M. Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters