Kathryn Leamon

“On the other hand, constant hysteria did have one unintended political virtue. If every new event canceled out every other event, like some wacky news-cycle pyramid scheme, then you always survived another day.”
― Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House

“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“To argue that the current extinction event could be averted if people just cared more and were willing to make more sacrifices is not wrong, exactly; still, it misses the point. It doesn’t much matter whether people care or don’t care. What matters is that people change the world. This capacity predates modernity,”
― Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

“Everything (and everyone) alive today is descended from an organism that somehow survived the impact. But it does not follow from this that they (or we) are any better adapted. In times of extreme stress, the whole concept of fitness, at least in a Darwinian sense, loses its meaning: how could a creature be adapted, either well or ill, for conditions it has never before encountered in its entire evolutionary history?”
― Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History