Shelley

“It became a routine: after feeding the cows and hogs, he’d wrap himself up in scarped and don another sweater and then retreat upstairs with his paints and paper. On the coldest days, he’d come down every half hour or so to let his fingers thaw out. Then he’d go back upstairs to continue this work that no one had asked for, work that he did only because there was a part of him that was tuned to the frequency of beauty rather than of usefulness…”
― Molly Patterson, Rebellion

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“You spent nearly four years on the border, she said. You weren’t just observing a reality, you were participating in it. You can’t exist within a system for that long without being implicated, without absorbing its poison. And let me tell you, it isn’t something that’s just going to slowly go away. It’s part of who you’ve become. So what will you do? All you can do is try to find a place to hold it, a way to not lose some purpose for it all.”
― Francisco Cantú, The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border

“If you're waiting until you feel talented enough to make it, you'll never make it.”
― Criss Jami, Healology