Travis J. Coner

“Daijiro said the group was composed of retired fruit and vegetable wholesalers on a week-long tour of America. They were visiting three places only: Niagara Falls, Las Vegas and Atlanta. “We want to see the history and beauty of America,” Daijiro explained.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“The past is a distant, receding coastline, and we are all in the same boat. Along the stern rail there is a line of telescopes; each brings the shore into focus at a given distance. If the boat is becalmed, one of the telescopes will be in continual use; it will seem to tell the whole, the unchanging truth. But this is an illusion; and as the boat sets off again, we return to our normal activity: scurrying from one telescope to another, seeing the sharpness fade in one, waiting for the blur to clear in another. And when the blur does clear, we imagine that we have made it do so all by ourselves.”
― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

“Like heavy heads of wheat whispering to each other right before harvest, our murmurs rippled.”
― Janet Skeslien Charles, The Paris Library

“Commerce, Voltaire declared, was the base on which the greatness of our nation was built; now it’s all that keeps us from going bankrupt.”
― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot