Nancy

“We’ve always lived rurally where it is much easier to avoid being bourgeois. The natural world draws you to herself with such power that you can easily ignore the rest of the culture and social obligations.”
― Jim Harrison, The Ancient Minstrel: Novellas

“From 1793 to 1797 I remained closely at home, saw none but those who came here, and at length became very sensible of the ill effect it had on my own mind. . . . I felt enough of the effect of withdrawing from the world then, to see that it led to an antisocial and misanthropic state of mind, which severely punishes him who gives in to it. And it will be a lesson I never shall forget as to myself. —JEFFERSON TO MARIA JEFFERSON EPPES
MARCH 3, 1802”
― Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx (National Book Award Winner): The Character of Thomas Jefferson

“What Deming and the other leading American authority on quality control, Joseph Juran, were telling the Japanese was that quality was not some minor function that could be accomplished by having some of the workers at the lowest levels attend a class or two, or by appointing a certain number of inspectors to keep an eye on things. True quality demanded a totality of commitment that began at the very top; if top management was committed to the idea of quality and if executive promotions were tied to quality, then the priority would seep down into the middle and lower levels of management, and thus inevitably to the workers. It could not, as so many American companies seemed to expect, be imposed at the bottom. American companies could not appoint some medium-level executive, usually one whom no division of the company particularly wanted, and, for lack of something better to do with him, put him in charge of something called quality.”
― David Halberstam, The Reckoning

“Kinnick had come to terms with the fact that 20 percent of his countrymen were greedy assholes. But then, in 2016, the greedy assholes joined with the idiot assholes and the paranoid assholes in what turned out to be an unbeatable constituency, Kinnick realizing that the asshole ceiling was much higher than he’d thought, perhaps half the country. Whatever the number, it was more than he could bear. Especially when they were in his own family. But, if he was being honest, it wasn’t those people,”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone