Patty Young

“This was encouraging to the refugees, but what lay beyond was even more so. At Mule Springs they would find supplies and horses and there, if not sooner, they would meet Mr. Woodworth and old Caleb Greenwood with their men. Beyond Woodworth was Captain Kern who had moved up from the Fort to establish a relay camp. Beyond Kern was Johnson’s ranch and beyond Johnson’s was Sutter’s where Sutter, Sinclair and McKinstry were forwarding supplies. Finally, beyond Sutter’s was Yerba Buena where Alcalde Bartlett and Governor Hull were backing up the relief work with money and necessaries. There was something heart-moving in the way that California, war-harried and thinly peopled, had rallied to the cause of humanity. It was as if a strong chain were extending itself link by link across the mountains, finally to reach the camps and draw out the sufferers. The seven had merely gone ahead in the strength of their own stout bodies and stouter hearts, but the next relief would have the organized strength of many men behind it. . . .”
― George R. Stewart, Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party

“This was why Rita sparred so often with Narisa, who had never learned how to reflect their mother’s image back to her because she always sought her own.”
― Elysha Chang, A Quitter's Paradise

“While Mrs. Brevoort was doing all she could to secure safe passage out of Europe for her family, Mr. Brevoort seemed to have taken permanent residence in a remote land ruled by occult conspiracies, mystic hierarchies, and labyrinthine laws. Everyday tasks became unmanageable, and each morning found him more and more disoriented. He spoke, day and night, in a mélange of increasingly imaginary tongues, struggling to understand the rules he had created for himself and getting lost in the antinomies and paradoxes that beset his mind. He became irascible.”
― Hernan Diaz, Trust

“Most of the arguments still put forward against evolution are so blatantly spurious, so intellectually bankrupt, that they don’t warrant the time of intelligent human beings in refuting them. There’s one exception: that if nature truly favored the proliferation of the most suitably equipped, women would have four arms by now, and eyes dotted around their heads like a spider. They already have a keen sense, which no man can match, of when something is a really bad idea.”
― Jo Bannister, Perfect Sins: A Mystery