Megan

“Punditry has tended to reduce the reality of class, which crosses lines of racial and gender identity, and to replace it with an all-encompassing marker of dispossession that exclusively features the once ascendant, now aggrieved “white working-class male.” Such an artificial, monolithic designation of working class reinforces the idea of voting blocs as fixed categories. As a result, politicians are said to appeal to one or another preset group. We need to see beyond.20 We need to look honestly at the real perils of our electoral system in this age of media celebrity and instantaneous communication, especially when compounded lies cease to shock and a cacophony of voices among insistent ideologues compromise constitutional principles and make it harder and harder to know which policies stand the best chance of improving the lives of more citizens. We need to stop thinking that some Americans are the real Americans, the deserving, the talented, the most patriotic and hardworking, while others can be dismissed as less deserving of the American dream.”
― Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

“Farewel happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then he
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“My dear,
Find what you love and let it kill you.
Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.
Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.
For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.
~ Falsely yours”
― Kinky Friedman

“That day I oft remember, when from sleep
I first awaked, and found myself reposed,
Under a shade, on flowers, much wondering where
And what I was, whence thither brought, and how.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost