Jing

“He had only thought, and Wolsey had only thought, that the Emperor and Spain would be against it. Only the Emperor. He smiles in the dark, hands behind his head. He doesn't say which people, but waits for Liz to tell him. 'All women,' she says. 'All women everywhere in England. All women who have a daughter but not a son. All women who have lost a child. All women who have lost any hope of having a child. All women who are forty.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“It’s impossible to resist the kindness of strangers. Someone who looks at you, who doesn’t know you, who tells you it’s OK, whatever you did, whatever you’ve done: you suffered, you hurt, you deserve forgiveness.”
― Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train

“We're coming to the end of the long, dark modern age. Slaughters of unnumbered human beings continue, but not among people who knew Spencer Tracy. Warfare persists, but the scale of battle is returning to something that the author of the Illiad would recognize. Maybe someday each combat casualty will rate the kind of mourning that Achilles did for Patroclus, except on television, and the saga of every Jessica Lynch will be an Odyssey or, anyway, a cover of People. There never will be peace, but we can have wars here, when we talk about our soldiers, we say, "Dey is only heros.”
― P.J. O'Rourke, Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism

“With every step upward a greater mystery
surrounded me. A few stars were out, and the brown night mist was creeping along the water below, but there was still light enough to see the road, and even to distinguish the bracken in the deserted hollows. The highway
became little better than a lane; at the top of the hill it plunged under tall pines, and was vaultedover with darkness. The kingdoms that have no walls, and are built up of shadows, began to oppress me as the night hardened. Had I had companions, still we would only have spoken in a whisper, and in that dungeon of trees even my ownself would not raise its voice within me. "--The Path to Rome”
― Belloc, Hilaire, 1870-1953.