Karleen

“Talking to her, he realized how easy it was to present an appearance of or- thodoxy while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant. In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird. Chapter It had happened at last. The expected message had come. All his life, it seemed to him, he had been waiting for this to happen. He was walking down the long corridor at the Minis-try and he was almost at the spot where Julia had slipped the note into his hand when he became aware that some - one larger than himself was walking just behind him. The person, whoever it was, gave a small cough, evidently as a prelude to speaking.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Time is a river that meanders, branching out into tributaries and rivulets, depositing sediments of stories along its shores in the hope that someday, someone, somewhere, will find them. The”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“In the Milky Way, which is about 110,000 light-years across, our sun is just one of between 100 and 400 billion stars, most hosting their own planets. Galaxies, like egos, come in varying sizes, and while ours is fairly spacious, there are others like the Andromeda galaxy (our neighbor) that are much, much larger.”
― Ella Frances Sanders, Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe

“Learning about the universe does little for earthly self-esteem. Our sun, powerful enough to turn white skin bronze and coax oxygen from every plant on earth, ranks fairly low by galactic standards. If the giant star Antares were positioned where our sun is—93 million miles away—the earth would be inside it! And our sun and Antares represent just two of 400 billion stars that swim around in the vast, forlorn space of the Milky Way. A dime held out at arm's length would block 15 million stars from view, if our eyes could see with unlimited power.”
― Philip Yancey, Finding God in Unexpected Places: Revised and Updated