Emily Yu

“It’s not that smart people aren’t capable of believing in cultish things; instead, says Shermer, it’s that smart people are better at “defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism—Understanding the Social Science of Cult Influence

“When you stay too long in a place, you forget just how big an expanse the world is. You get no sense of the length of those longitudes and latitudes. Just as, she supposed, it is hard to have a sense of the vastness inside any one person. But once you sense that vastness, once something reveals it, hope emerges, whether you want it to or not, and it clings to you as stubbornly as lichen clings to rock.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“Where Josie is stiff and unanimated, her mother is all expansive hand gestures and chatter. She’s glamorous, too, clearly takes care of her appearance, sees herself as a woman worthy of attention and respect.”
― Lisa Jewell, None of This Is True

“With words, we breathe reality into being.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism