lyz

“It was the encounter between the printed page and the oral culture, of which he was one embodiment, that led Menocchio to formulate -first for himsel, later for himself, later for his fellow villagers, and finally for the judges- the "opinions ... (that) came out of his head.”
― Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller

“Then why did you do it?" she asked.
"To protect you," he said. "To protect everyone around me. I'm sorry I couldn't think of a better way how."
She had no response to that. His words terrified her. If Jiang had seen this hell as the best of alternatives, then what had he been afraid of?
"I'm sorry, child," Jiang stretched out his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "I am so sorry.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“Elites with entrenched interests will always hate you," Daji said. "That's inevitable. But the elites don't matter, the masses do. What you have to do is shroud yourself in myth. Your enemies' deaths become part of your legend. Eventually you will become so far removed from reality that right and wrong don't apply to you. Your identity becomes part and parcel of the idea of the nation itself. They'll love you no matter what you do.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“I learned that being female is as prefab, thoughtless, soulless, and abjectly capitalistic as a Big Mac. It's not important that it's real. It's only important that it's tasty.”
― Chelsea G. Summers, A Certain Hunger