Jeff Jones

“Das Reich der Zwei, the nation of two my Helga and I had—its territory, the territory we defended so jealously, didn’t go much beyond the bounds of our great double bed. Flat, tufted, springy little country, with my Helga and me for mountains. And, with nothing in my life making sense but love, what a student of geography I was! What a map I could draw for a tourist a micron high, a submicroscopic Wandervögel bicycling between a mole and a curly golden hair on either side of my Helga’s belly button. If this image is in bad taste, God help me. Everybody is supposed to play games for mental health.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Mother Night

“You’re a comfort to me,” he said simply. “I mean to be. I bet you haven’t been comforted once since all this began. And that’s not good, Bird. At a time like this you must be careful to have someone comfort you almost more than you need at least once. Otherwise you’ll find yourself helpless when the time comes to summon up your courage and break away from chaos.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“Some mills rose up behind those buildings, their windows broken or nonexistent, the brick edifices festooned with graffiti, the land reclaiming the lower floors and punching cracks through the foundations. It had happened before she was born, this wholesale discarding of American industry, this switch from a culture that made things of value to a culture that consumed things of dubious merit. She’d grown up in the absence, in other people’s memory of a dream so fragile it had probably been doomed from the moment of conception. If there had ever been a social contract between the country and its citizens, it was long gone now, save the Hobbesian agreement that had been in play since our ancestors had first stumbled from caves in search of food: Once I get mine, you’re on your own.”
― Dennis Lehane, Since We Fell

“There is a fine article in the current Reader’s Digest with the title, “There are No Atheists in Foxholes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Mother Night