Susan Gregory

“I skim through the issue [of Elle] and reach the offending photo, a montage that ridicules rather than glorifies our idol. It is one of the mysteries of our trade. You work for weeks on a subject, it goes back and forth among the most skillful pairs of hands, and no one spots the glaring blunder that a neophyte would spot in a second.”
― Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death

“Maybe the private life wasn't forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spent the rest of their lives remembering.”
― Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

“He's feeling a pull, like gravity, of the approaching TV news. It's a condition of the times, this compulsion to hear how it stands with the world, and be joined to the generality, to a community of anxiety. The habit's grown stronger these past two years; a different scale of news value has been set by monstrous and spectacular scenes. [...] Everyone fears it, but there's also a darker longing in the collective mind, a sickening for self-punishment and a blasphemous curiosity. Just as the hospitals have their crisis plans, so the television networks stand ready to deliver, and their audiences wait. Bigger, grosser next time. Please don't let it happen. But let me see it all the same, as it's happening and from every angle, and let me be among the first to know.”
― Ian McEwan, Saturday

“The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi