Katharine

“Aristocracy's only an admission that certain traits which we call fine - courage and honor and beauty and all that sort of thing - can best be developed in a favorable environment, where you don't have the warpings of ignorance and necessity.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Composed together into architectural sentences, the rooms, (nouns), doors and windows, (verbs), details, (adjectives and adverbs), and the special features and accents, (interjections), become the prose of architecture. Unfortunately, just like in writing, some sentences are doomed to be pulp fiction. Your Perfect House can be better than that. It should be destined to become great literature.”
― William J. Hirsch Jr., Designing Your Perfect House: Lessons from an Architect

“The approach this nation has taken to waging war since Vietnam (absolving the people from meaningful involvement), along with the way it organizes its army (relying on professionals), has altered the relationship between the military and society in ways that too few Americans seem willing to acknowledge. Since 9/11, the relationship has been heavy on symbolism and light on substance, with assurances of admiration for soldiers displacing serious consideration of what they are sent to do or what consequences ensue. In all the ways that actually matter, that relationship has almost ceased to exist.”
― Andrew J. Bacevich