Taters

“I knew I had a problem when I found myself saying, to my reflection, in my laptop screen, 'What has two gigantic thumbs and needs to quit social media?' 'This guy'... before bursting into laughter, then tears, then song: the main three things a human can burst into. The fourth being flames. Also the song was the British National Anthem and I don't know why.”
― James Acaster, James Acaster's Guide to Quitting Social Media

“My mind made them into insects, because my mind wanted stories it could understand, stories that would not frighten it. But still I knew my mind was tricking me, and for a second I loved my mind for the deception.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, This World Is Full of Monsters

“There have been many plagues in the world as there have been wars, yet plagues and wars always find people equally unprepared. [...] When a war breaks out people say: 'It won't last, it's too stupid.' And war is certainly too stupid, but that doesn't prevent it from lasting. Stupidity always carries doggedly on, as people wold notice if they were not always thinking about themselves. In this respect, the citizens of Oran were like the rest of the world, they thought about themselves, in other words, they were humanists: they did not believe in pestilence. A pestilence does not have human dimensions, so people tell themselves that it is unreal, that it is a bad dream which will end. But it does not always end and, from one bad dream to the next, it is people who end, humanists first of all because they have not prepared themselves.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“The answer, as with so many things those piteous little creatures dredged from the mud, was poison.”
― Brooke Bolander, The Only Harmless Great Thing