Jools

“As for history, we are living in its ruins. And as for biographies, we are living with the consequences of all the decisions ever made in them. I tend not to read them for pleasure. It's not unlike carefully scrutinizing the map when one has already reached the destination.'
'But romances aren't real, and surely never were. Doesn't that take away some of the savour?'
'What an interesting choice of words. "Not real, and never were." Could there be any more appropriate literature for men of our profession? Why are you always so averse to fiction, when we've made it our meal-ticket?'
'I live in the real world,' said Locke, 'and my methods are of the real world. They are, just as you say, a profession. A practicality, not some romantic whim.”
― Scott Lynch, Red Seas Under Red Skies

“I am only a country girl,” said Vasya. She reached again into the blackberry bush, wary of thorns. “I have never seen Tsargrad, or angels, or heard the voice of God. But I think you should be careful, Batyushka, that God does not speak in the voice of your own wishing. We have never needed saving before.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“I had thought fermentation was controlled death. Left alone, a head of cabbage molds and decomposes. It becomes rotten, inedible. But when brined and stored, the course of its decay is altered. Sugars are broken down to produce lactic acid, which protects it from spoiling. Carbon dioxide is released and the brine acidifies. It ages. Its color and texture transmute. Its flavor becomes tarter, more pungent. It exists in time and transforms. So it is not quite controlled death, because it enjoys a new life altogether.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“But human beings fall easily into despair, and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place our lives in a larger setting, that revealed an underlying pattern, and gave us a sense that, against all the depressing and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value.”
― Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth