Mike Walder

“newborn baby is an extraordinary event; and I have never seen two babies who looked or even sounded remotely alike. Here it is, this breathing miracle who could not live an instant without you, with a skull more fragile than an egg, a miracle of eyes, legs, toenails, and (especially) lungs. It gropes in the light like a blind thing—it is, for the moment, blind—what can it make of what it sees? It’s got a little hair, which it’s going to lose, it’s got no teeth, it pees all over you, it belches, and when it’s frightened or hungry, quite without knowing what a miracle it’s accomplishing, it exercises its lungs. You watch it discover it has a hand; then it discovers it has toes. Presently, it discovers it has you, and since it has already decided it wants to live, it gives you a toothless smile when you come near it, gurgles or giggles when you pick it up, holds you tight by the thumb or the eyeball or the hair, and, having already opted against solitude, howls when you put it down.”
― James Baldwin, No Name in the Street

“His mind, as he sucked and spat, was fragmented by drink and mild concussion”
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy

“I am not religious, I reckon. But peace is in my heart: I know it is. I have done things but neither better nor worse than them that pretend otherlike, and I know that Old Marster will care for me as for ere a sparrow that falls.”
― William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

“Some in his community were suspicious, too—how convenient that people always managed to almost drown themselves whenever young Reagan was around, and how annoying that he never seemed to shut up about it.”
― Rick Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan