(no subject)

Part of the ordinary mob, you are everybody and you are nobody.

- Andrew O'Hagan, The Missing

(no subject)

He's not my real father, but he's the one who's been there for me. Like he always told me, it's time that makes a family, not just blood.

[ . . . ]

I'm the step-daughter of a paper son and I've inherited this whole suitcase full of lies.

- Fae Ng, Bone

(no subject)

I guess you could call it the only religion I have, one drum that can fit in my hand, but I think if I played it a little, it might fill up the world.

- Sherman Alexie, Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

(no subject)

So possible is it for us to roll ourselves up in Wickedness, till we grow invulnerable by Conscience; and that Centinel once doz'd, sleeps fast, not to be awaken'd while the Tide of Pleasure continues to flow, or till something doark and dreadful bring us to ourselves again.

- Daniel DeFoe, Roxana

(no subject)

One of the generalities most often noted about Americans is that we are a restless, a dissatisfied, a searching people. We bridle and buck under failure, and we go mad with dissatisfaction in the face of success. We spend our time searching for security, and hate it when we get it.

[ . . . ]

For Americans too the wide and general dream has a name. It is called "the American Way of Life." No one can define it or point to any one person or group that lives it, but it is real nevertheless. These dreams describe our vague yearnings toward what we wish were and hope we may be: wise, just, compassionate, and noble. The fact that we have this dream at all is perhaps an indication of its possibility.

- John Steinbeck, American and Americans

(no subject)

Do not believe that you alone can be right.
A man who thinks that,
The man that maintains that only he has the power
To reason correctly, the gift to speak, the soul--
A man like that, when you know him, turns out empty.

- Sophocles, "Antigone"

(no subject)

The waking is white and perfectly still, without sensation and without haste. Some mornings it isn’t clear at all where the edge of the forest or the dust storm is. Daybreak blends in all directions.

- Joy Kogawa, Obasan