when someone you care for goes away, you might feel as though the world has been put on pause, and that it will remain so until they return, which, if they have died, is unlikely to happen.
“not one girl I think
who looks on the light of the sun
will ever
have wisdom
like this”
― If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
who looks on the light of the sun
will ever
have wisdom
like this”
― If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
“Many of the institutions of modern society, after all, are designed to enhance our natural capacities for cooperation, by punishing non-cooperators and encouraging the rest of us to pursue even relatively mundane collective actions, like paying taxes and getting flu shots. And so, when pandemics unfold, it's not just because peculiarly aggressive pathogens have exploited passively oblivious victims or because we've inadvertently provided them with ample transmission opportunities. It's also because our deeply rooted, highly nuanced capacity for cooperative action failed.”
― Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond
― Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond
“As the excellent Gretchen Weiners once said, ‘Brutus is just as cute as Caesar, right? Brutus is just as smart as Caesar, people totally like Brutus just as much as they like Caesar, and when did it become OK for one person to be the boss of everybody because that’s not what Rome is about!”
― A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome
― A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome
“Four thousand miles away in France, the old boys from the Haute-Loire Resistance wrote to each other to share the devastating news. They had enjoyed nearly forty years of freedom since spending a mere couple of months in Virginia’s presence in 1944. But the warrior they called La Madone had shown them hope, comradeship, courage, and the way to be the best version of themselves, and they had never forgotten. In the midst of hardship and fear, she had shared with them a fleeting but glorious state of happiness and the most vivid moment of their lives. The last of those famous Diane Irregulars—the ever-boyish Gabriel Eyraud, her chouchou—passed away in 2017 while I was researching Virginia’s story. Until the end of his days, he and the others who had known Virginia on the plateau liked to pause now and then to think of the woman in khaki who never, ever gave up on freedom. When they talked with awe and affection of her incredible exploits, they smiled and looked up at the wide, open skies with “les étoiles dans les yeux.”
― A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
― A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
“As had happened with Julius Caesar, it turned out that the people of Rome were actually quite keen on Gaius and were not fans of presumptuous senators and magistrates making unilateral decisions about the nature of Roman government with swords. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, they believed, not from some farcical bloody murder. Strange men in corridors distributing stab wounds was no basis for a system of government.”
― A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome
― A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome
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