Noah Nelson

“The problem with these top-down accounts of political change is that they privilege institutions over citizen agency and thus understate the role of civil society and different forms of civic activity. This is unfortunate because civil society, by making the exercise of state power more accountable to the public, can help to make state institutions more democratic.”
― Megan Ming Francis, Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State

“I began to study trigonometry. There was solace in its strange formulas and equations. I was drawn to the Pythagorean theorem and its promise of a universal--the ability to predict the nature of any three points containing a right angle, anywhere, always. What I knew of physics I had learned in the junkyard, where the physical world often seemed unstable, capricious. But here was a principle through which the dimensions of life could be defined, captured. Perhaps reality was not wholly volatile. Perhaps it could be explained, predicted. Perhaps it could be made to make sense.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“He presses the triggers. And like roses in his hands, death blooms.”
― Jay Kristoff, Illuminae

“When we look away from the importance of the erotic in the development and sustenance of our power, or when we look away from ourselves as we satisfy our erotic needs in concert with others, we use each other as objects of satisfaction rather than share our joy in the satisfying, rather than make connection with our similarities and our differences.”
― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches