Mist Willingham > Recent Status Updates

"...sometimes the struggle for justice gets somewhere. Do you know how that happens? Do you have a theory of change?"
I shrugged. "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice?"
She made a fart noise. "You know what makes it bend, Masha? People hauling on that mother, with all their strength, with all their lives. We pull and pull and pull, and then, bit by bit, it bends."

..."someone had given them workshops on how to make a really effective Molotov, without which they would surely have removed themselves from the gene pool already."

LOL

"I know he (Gandhi) was one of the greatest men who ever lived, but I declare, Patricia Anne, the man should have worn some sure-enough pants." LOL

"Are you the man who has been helping my recalcitrant sister get into trouble with the police?"

"Hardly", William replied with a slight smile. "I find your sister has no problem whatsoever getting into trouble with the police all by herself."

Amy glared at William. "Traitor."

"Mama always taught us that we should exercise tenacity, but Sister didn't know the difference between exercising it and beating it to death," LOL

Imagine the joy of seeing for the first time, or the euphoria of taking a first step. Then square that feeling and make it negative. Take a ball of poison, dip it in thorns and manure, wap it in a poultice of festering bandages, boil the whole lot in a cauldron of unspeakably vile excretions, and shove it up your nose.

"It's when mercy is least expected that it's most potent--"

"Climate disaster has put a spotlight on the need for human society to evolve beyond dependence on petroleum, but our very capacity to decide on that--or anything--remains at risk as long as the industry is still ranging like a ravenous predator on the field of democracy."

"The Russian operation pushed American politicians and political parties to more and more extreme positions; it celebrated all manner of fringe, splinter, and radical politics and demonized centrists, moderates, and anybody on any point of the ideological spectrum who actually believed government could be harnassed for anything useful at all."

"The Internet Research Agency ops counted on a sentiment that had been invoked by one of the white nationalist speakers at that galactic freak-show International Russian Conservative Forum across town: "One hundred repetitions make one truth. The defenders of the truth can be overwhelmed by repeated lies.""

"Political elites that can get themselves into the catbird seat when it comes to oil revenues will have every reason to curry favor with the oil companies doing the drilling, and every reason to fight anyone else who might take political power and thereby edge in on the financial teat they've stuck themselves to."

"[Yeltsin's] boldness and vision made him a heroic and popular figure among his fellow citizens deep into the 1990s, until his overnight decentralization of the economy began to get somebody-forgot-the-training-wheels wobbly."

"Marmite is a gooey dark brown concoction made of yeast and vegetable extract; it's either delicious on buttered toast or the worst thing you could ever do to a perfectly fine piece of buttered toast, depending on whether you absolutely love it or absolutely hate it, which are the only two options."

The video had restarted and before the Chief could turn it off he saw again Jean Guy Beauvoir gunned down. Falling. Hitting the concrete floor.

Until this moment, Chied Inspector Gamache hadn't realized that Jean Guy Beauvoir had never really got up.

"People do change, Chief Inspector. But you need to know something." She lowered her voice. "It's not always for the better."

"Sobriety isn't for cowards, Chief Inspector. Whatever you might think of an alcoholic, to get sober, really sober demands great honesty, and that demands great courage. Stopping drinking's the easy part. Then we have to face ourselves. Our demons. How many people are willing to do that?"

"Not many," Gamache admitted. "But what happens if the demons win?"

""We're going into the back garden. Want to join us?"
Ruth looked at Clara holding the stick, then at Myrna with the cigar made of dried sage and sweetgrass.
"You're not going to do one of those profane witch ritual things are you?"
"We certainly are," Myrna said from behind Clara.
"Count me in.""

"Not for the first time Three Pines struck Myrna as the equivalent of the Human Society. Taking in the wounded, the unwanted. The mad, the sore.

This was a shelter. Though, clearly, not a no-kill shelter."

"I swapped my wishbone for a backbone, as they say, and committed myself to the realization of the dream that brought me here."

"And you emerged from this place believing there are no fields of Aaru. No kingdom of heaven."
"No, I emerged from this place believing that if such a place exists, it offers no wonders greater than those here on earth."

"My window is a glass door that opens out onto a tiny balcony where regular successions of plants arrive, blossom, then die under my neglectful eye."