Christopher Ellis

“Pain is life, and life is pain. If it didn't hurt, you didn't care, and if you didn't care, you're already dead,”
― M.R. Forbes, Dead of Night

“Mathematically, maybe,” I said. “But trust isn’t one of those things that lends itself well to math.” “Sure it does,” Bob said. “You trust somebody, they betray you, you get a negative value. You never trust, they can never disappoint you, you break even.”
― Jim Butcher, Cold Days

“I'm getting my ass kicked by tiny faeries!" I shouted back, fumbling to start the car. "They've got my freaking number!"

"Run away!" Bob giggled. "Run away! Tiny faeries!"

growled in frustration and popped the Redcap's hat down over Bob. "Stop being a jerk. This is serious."

Bob's voice was only barely muffled. It sounded like he couldn't breathe. "Serious! Tiny! Faeries! The m-m- mighty wizard Dresden!”
― Jim Butcher, Cold Days

“History is a narrative enterprise, and the telling of stories that are true, that affirm and explain our existence, is the fundamental task of the historian. But truth is delicate, and it has many enemies. Perhaps that is why, although we academics are supposedly in the business of pursuing the truth, the word “truth” is rarely uttered without hedges, adornments, and qualifications.
Every time we tell a story about a great atrocity, like the Holocaust or Pingfang, the forces of denial are always ready to pounce, to erase, to silence, to forget. History has always been difficult because of the delicacy of the truth, and denialists have always been able to resort to labeling the truth as fiction.
One has to be careful, whenever one tells a story about a great injustice. We are a species that loves narrative, but we have also been taught not to trust an individual speaker.
Yes, it is true that no nation, and no historian, can tell a story that completely encompasses every aspect of the truth. But it is not true that just because all narratives are constructed, that they are equally far from the truth. The Earth is neither a perfect sphere nor a flat disk, but the model of the sphere is much closer to the truth. Similarly, there are some narratives that are closer to the truth than others, and we must always try to tell a story that comes as close to the truth as is humanly possible.
The fact that we can never have complete, perfect knowledge does not absolve us of the moral duty to judge and to take a stand against evil.”
― Ken Liu, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories