Book bits

[Lilith7]

I thought I'd start a thread for anyone who wants to add  any  interesting things we come across in books of all kinds.




"Possibly it feels good to these men to be superior to animals, but it does seem that if they were sure of it they would not have to prove it. Often a man who is afraid must constantly demonstrate his courage and, in the case of the hunter, must keep a tangible record of his courage. For ourselves, we have had mounted in a small hardwood plaque one perfect Borrego (big horned mountain sheep) dropping. And where another man can say ÔÇ£There was an animal, but because I am greater than he, he is dead & I am alive, & there is his head to prove itÔÇØ, we can say, ÔÇ£There was an animal, & for all we know there still is & here is the proof of it. He was very healthy when last we heard of him.ÔÇØ

The log from the sea of Cortez, John Steinbeck.




"The nations of the world that most vigorously foul the planetary nest & those in possession of the most destructive arsenals ought to be governed only by young women with small kids. More than anyone else, such mothers must live in the future, & they also face each day the realities of raw human nature. This gives them a special insight."

Children of god, Mary Doria Russell




"IÔÇÖve found the prescription for the powerful men of the world, the ones who sit around peace tables clad in jackets & ties. Put the blue child on the table & make them stay. Make them stay & watch death do its methodical work, watch as it eats away at the child from within. Hand out sandwiches, cigarettes & mineral water & leave them there while the child empties, while he decomposes to the bone .Leave them there for days, for all the days it takes. This is what IÔÇÖd do."
Margaret Mazzantini, Twice born.



"Religion is not one of my high points. I donÔÇÖt really subscribe to the stories surrounding each one, because they are just stories, remembered by men. I do feel the Great Spirit in all that is around me, & I am humbled/ I do pray with others if that is what they do. I donÔÇÖt judge them for that. That is their way I join them. Then I move on. The moon means a lot to me, as does the forest. All things natural speak to me with a rhythm that I feel. It is this that probably makes me a pagan.
There is no evil in the forest or the moon. Or, if there is, I donÔÇÖt see it.
The Great Spirit, as I like to call her, is in us all & in everything that lives or used to live, in everything that exists or used to exist."
Waging heavy peace, Neil Young



"My Mother didnÔÇÖt try to stab my Father until I was six, but she must have shown signs of oddness before that."
Never have your dog stuffed & other things IÔÇÖve learned, Alan Alda.



"The movie premiere. After the show, a loudspeaker alerted fans to the departing great ÔÇô Mr Clark GableÔÇÖs car! Miss Marlene DietrichÔÇÖs car! Miss Constance BennettÔÇÖs car! Miss Shirley TempleÔÇÖs motherÔÇÖs car! And on one glorious occasion ÔÇô Mr. Alfred HitchcarÔÇÖs cock!"
David Niven, Bring on the empty horses.

[Lilith7]

"Predictably, Trump supporters produced a great number of images showing her (Hilary Clinton)with snaky locks,
but the most horribly memorable of them adapted Cellini's bronze, a much better fit because it wasn't just a head: it also included the 'heroic' male adversary & killer. All you needed to do was superimpose Trump s face on that of Perseus & give Clinton's features to the severed head.

This scene of Perseus-Trump brandishing the head of Medusa-Clinton was very much part of the everyday, domestic American world. You could buy it on T shirts, & tank tops, on coffee mugs, on laptop sleeves & tote bags, sometimes with the logo Triumph, sometimes Trump.

It may take a moment or two to take in that normalisation of gendered violence, but if you were ever doubtful about the extent to which the exclusion of women from power is culturally embedded or unsure of the continued strength of classical ways of formulating & justifying it ÔÇô well, I give you Trump & Clinton, Persues & Medusa & rest my case."

Women in power.
Mary Beard

[Olive]

Mary Beard is wonderful, I'm a huge admirer. She deals with a monstrous amount of hostility with good grace and a few tears, and is an example to us all.

[Lilith7]

Mary Beard is wonderful, I'm a huge admirer.  She deals with a monstrous amount of hostility with good grace and a few tears, and is an example to us all.

I've really only seen her on TV in programmes about ancient Rome & Romans, but have her book, Twelve Caesars on hold at the library.

[Olive]

I follow her on Twitter, where she sometimes quotes the dreadful insults she gets sent.

[Lilith7]

I follow her on Twitter, where she sometimes quotes the dreadful insults she gets sent.

I'm quite glad I don't do twitter then.

[Zurdo]

Wish I was still reading my Cynthia Harrod-Eagles book, I could fill a page with quotes.

However one was classic, for me. Slider is interviewing a suspect, and a cat come up and rubs against his leg, and Purrs Like a Volvo.

I have a Volvo 850, and nothing describes that 5 cylinder sound than a purr.

[Lilith7]

This is a bit long but I found the idea fascinating; that we could learn empathy from wolves, of all creatures.


ÔÇ£Darwin told us we're descended from apes so scientists studied them to understand us, They wanted to know where our so-called humanity came from. Kindness, patience, loyalty, cooperation, most importantly, empathy.ÔÇØ
ÔÇ£And?ÔÇØ
ÔÇ£Couldn't find any of 'em. Not in apes. Not in primates. They found intelligence, self-awareness, long term planning, but none of the big-ticket social emotions.ÔÇØ
ÔÇ£Where'd they come from?ÔÇØ asks Richard.
ÔÇ£WolvesÔÇØ he says. ÔÇ£Forty thousand years ago, humans & wolves teamed up. It began with garbage. Wolves wanted our leftovers, so they started hanging out by our refuse piles. We liked having cleaner camps. Better hygiene, healthier tribe. Over time, it became a partnership. The wolves, especially the ones who weren't afraid of humans, got more food, lived longer lives, had more pups. And the humans, especially the ones who liked wolves, had cleaner camps, less disease, more children.

ÔÇ£Exerting evolutionary pressure.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£Yeah. And adaption. After starting out garbage cans, wolves became our security guards: barking at danger, keeping us safe. Then we started huntung together. Wolves hear & smell better, so they took over tracking. We had opposable thumbs so we focused on killing. For both species, these are huge advantages.ÔÇØ
ÔÇ£Co-evolutionÔÇØ says Richard dryly.
ÔÇ£Uh huhÔÇØ.
ÔÇ£No. Why are you telling me about co-evolution?ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£The partnership changed us. To co-evolve with wolves, we needed to learn to live with wolves. Our pack size grew. A bigger pack might be a stronger pack, but only if the members can cooperate & work toward a common goal. This required more patience, more collaboration, more loyalty, more empathy, than ever existed in our primate past.
But once we teamed up with wolves, evolution began selecting for these things. It means our celebrated humanity is actually a collection of traits we learned from wolves.ÔÇØ
...

ÔÇ£Unfortunately, I'm making a different point. We teamed up with wolves 40 thousand years ago, but empathy ÔÇô the word ÔÇô didn't show up until the late eighteen hundreds. It took us that long to recognise & name that emotion. We're slow learners.ÔÇØ

Last tango in cyberspace
Steven Kotler

[Lilith7]

ÔÇ£In the spirit of fellowship & charity I think that everyone in our country should have enough resources to flourish. By that I mean that no one should ever be homeless. Education, healthcare & free food. We will be a society that cares for the sick & for the disabled ÔÇô although for a few generations only the healthy will be selected by the UKSA for colonisation. Money is only for the practical purposes of sharing resources & cannot be hoarded. Every three years, all debts are cleared. And no one can own the land. We are simply jointly responsible custodians of the new world we've been given. We have to take care of it.ÔÇØ

Do you dream of Terra-two?
Temi Oh


ÔÇ£I now signified that it was imperatively necessary I should be relieved of her prescence.ÔÇØ
IsnÔÇÖt that a wonderfully elegant way of saying ÔÇÿpi** off?!ÔÇÖ
(Charlotte Bronte, Villette.)
Freya, Anthony Quinn


ÔÇ£It is remarkable, I have since thought, how once a man has a few coins, no matter how he came by them, he thinks right away that he is entitled to them & whatever they can buy, & fancies himself cock of the walk.ÔÇØ
Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

[Lilith7]

"Religion is not one of my high points. I donÔÇÖt really subscribe to the stories surrounding each one, because they are just stories, remembered by men. I do feel the Great Spirit in all that is around me, & I am humbled/ I do pray with others if that is what they do. I donÔÇÖt judge them for that. That is their way I join them. Then I move on. The moon means a lot to me, as does the forest. All things natural speak to me with a rhythm that I feel. It is this that probably makes me a pagan.
There is no evil in the forest or the moon. Or, if there is, I donÔÇÖt see it.
The Great Spirit, as I like to call her, is in us all & in everything that lives or used to live, in everything that exists or used to exist."

Waging heavy peace, Neil Young

ÔÇØOur humankind at this moment in our destiny is a child blowing on a dandelion, without thought or understanding. But the wonder in a child is the wonder in us & thereÔÇÖs no limit to the good we can do , when human hearts connect. ItÔÇÖs the truth of us. ItÔÇÖs the story of us. ItÔÇÖs the meaning of the word god: we are one. We are one. We are one.
Gregory David Roberts, The mountain shadow

ÔÇ£The western civilization, which had fought & beaten mid 20th century totalitarianism, was held in a headlock by concealed number crunchers & mouth pieces for neo liberal gobbledegook.ÔÇØ

Eye of the songbird, Michael Munro.

[Lilith7]

ÔÇØOur humankind at this moment in our destiny is a child blowing on a dandelion, without thought or understanding. But the wonder in a child is the wonder in us & thereÔÇÖs no limit to the good we can do , when human hearts connect. ItÔÇÖs the truth of us. ItÔÇÖs the story of us. ItÔÇÖs the meaning of the word god: we are one. We are one. We are one."

Gregory David Roberts, The mountain shadow


"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.
To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery. "

Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents

[Lilith7]

ÔÇ£Everything leaves a mark. Every blow echoes in the forest inside, every injustice cuts a branch, & every loss is a fallen tree. The beautiful courage of us, the hope that defines our kind, is that we go on, no matter how much life wounds us. We walk. We face the sea & the wind & the salted truth of death, & we go on.
And every step we take, every breath we spend, every wish fulfilled is a duty to those lives & loves no longer graced, as we still are, with the spark & rhythm of the Source: the soul we loved, in their eyes.ÔÇØ
Gregory David Roberts, The mountain shadow


When Theresa May made her first party conference speech as Prime Minister, she said that if you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.
It is worth noting that, in Germany in 1933, someone said ÔÇ£It is a small rootless, international clique that is turning the people against each other ÔÇô that does not want them to have peace. It is people who are at home both nowhere & everywhere ÔÇô who do not have anywhere a soil on which they have grown up.ÔÇØ
That person was Adolf Hitler.
I put MayÔÇÖs speech to Stella. ÔÇ£A citizen of the world, for me, is about compassionÔÇØ she says ÔÇ£And my worry is sheÔÇÖs trading off patriotism against compassion. Compassion & tolerance always used to be a very proud British value & sheÔÇÖs stripping that out.ÔÇØ
Stella Creasy, Brit. MP.

I must belong somewhere, Jonathan Dean

[Lilith7]

The bacha posh girls who are nominated as boys temporarily

P 152 Marriage is a core component of the patriarchal system.
According to Gerda LernerÔÇÖs research on ancient societies, a woman could achieve at least some status, & with that, better treatment & privileges, through preserving her only capital ÔÇô her virginity - & eventually offering it to just one man. That idea evolved into the marriage contract, where a woman vowed to remain sexually exclusive to one man, with the expectation that it would bring him heirs to preserve a line of land & capital. Any woman suspected of not being a virgin posed the risk of carrying someone elseÔÇÖs child, which disqualified her as a potential bride.
No group can be truly suppressed until its members are trained & convinced to suppress one another. To hold the system of patriarchy in place, a woman could always further [rove herself a chaste & proper person by shaming those who fell short of the mark, Lerner explained.
In other words, by calling out other women as suspected whores, as women commonly do to this day.


P 178According to the way in which American philosopher & gender theorist Judith Butler has described it, Shukrias gender  both the male & the female  was experienced as a social construct, where repetition of certain acts formed her identity on each side. According to Butler, just as little children learn to speak language by repeating the\same words & actions over & over, gender behaviours are learned. A persons sex is determined at birth, but gender is not. It is trained & adopted through performance.


P 303 Countries that want to develop their economies & standards of living cannot afford to shut out one half of their population. Conservatives & extremists in any society are extremely aware of this fact. Those who control life, & the bodies of women, control the money & hold the power. Women who are kept indoors, whether because of references to religion, culture or honour, cannot make money & will not hold any power. Women who are married off & locked up, raped by older husbands in order to produce male heirs, will never rule a country or explore its natural resources. Or go to war, for that matter. Women who never receive an education are not likely to demand their rightful inheritance.

Women who do not have a say over their own bodiesÔÇÖ reproduction will never be able to challenge men on economic power. Those who hold the power to create life control the universe.

The underground girls of Kabul; the hidden lives of Afghan girls disguised as boys.
Jenny Nordberg




ÔÇ£If Middle east leaders got their act together & stopped fuelling a senseless sectarian conflict ÔÇô always in the name of a religion whose true character is apparently impossible to agree upon ÔÇô the next generation in that region would have a chance of growing up learning about history, medicine, & mathematics instead of running from bullets & bombs, fleeing their towns & living in refugee camps or on the street.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£The world is not facing a clash of civilizations or cultures, but a clash between those who want to build bridges & those who would rather see the world in polarities, who are working hard to spread hatred & divide us.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£These days, people expect a reporter to take sides. But thatÔÇÖs not my job. It is difficult to stand in the middle, but I believe losing the ability to listen is far more destructive.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£If IÔÇÖve learned anything; itÔÇÖs this: a motherÔÇÖs screams over the body of her murdered child sound the same no matter if she is black, brown or white; Muslim, Jewish or Christian; Shia or Sunni.
We will all be buried in the same ground.ÔÇØ

Souad Mekhennet, I was told to come alone, my journey behind the lines of jihad.

[Lilith7]

National service but not in armed forces

" To re energise our country & gird it for the struggles ahead, we need our young to be committed to the future of their community & their nation, as well as themselves.

I feel strongly that mandatory service to the state has got to return to these shores. I am not speaking about the sort of National service that entails square bashing & grinding individuality down to a pulp.
I am not advocating that young people be taught how to be fodder for the wars of the old. Nor am I suggesting that we return to a regimented patriotism that is yellow with prejudice & narrow-mindedness.

Instead, we need a national service that obliges all young people during their gap year to travel the country & learn about their neighbouring regions.
We cannot appreciate the difficulties of being either a Londoner or a rural farm worker in Yorkshire unless we have experienced their lives first hand. For the sake of our countryÔÇÖs future, the young need to interact with different communities, different lifestyles, & different religions."

MP salaries

"Since the majority of us can never aspire to the life style of our rulers we must insist that future govts really represent us. There have to be term limits for prime ministers, lords, & MPs. Govt should be as the USA constitution aptly states; ÔÇÖfor & by the people.ÔÇÖ It is time that we made Westminster less a rite of passage for the elite & truly a house for the public to meet & steer Britain effectively & justly through this century."


HarryÔÇÖs last stand; how the world my generation built is falling down & what we can do to save it, Harry Leslie Smith.

[Lilith7]

"Taxation
As citizens we have to accept that we must be taxed on our income to allow the state to provide the social services that make this nation a civilized place to live.. For those blessed with extreme wealth we must look at taxing not only income but capital; it hardly seems fair that a few hundred families should be able to retain vast riches for hundreds of years because they influence the politics of the day.

Small Businesses
As well as encouraging small, local businesses, we also have to revolutionise our farming industry to support small, productive cooperatives of family-owned ventures over big agriculture. We have to motivate small business to create jobs & prosperity. ItÔÇÖs time that instead of looking for big business to keep Britain working, we look to small entrepreneurs who have kept their communities afloat.

Tax avoidance
A person or company that dodges their tax responsibility through legal or illegal means is far worse & more dangerous than your run of the mill cat burglar. We have to start treating the grand-scale tax avoidance which firms like Apple, Starbucks & Google have been allowed to perpetuate as a crime against the state.
There is very little to differentiate between the moral evil of someone who sells a state secret for cash & someone who stashes hundreds of millions of pounds offshore, preventing hospitals, schools, the military & social welfare from being properly funded.

It isnÔÇÖt the benefits cheat, the pensioner with the bus pass or the people who have difficulty making ends meet on a zero hours contracts & need to use a foodbank that are emptying the coffers of this state. It is the corporations, their well paid executives, the indolent rich & the citizens of opulence who have brought a decline to the western world & the people of this country."


HarryÔÇÖs last stand; how the world my generation built is falling down & what we can do to save it, Harry Leslie Smith.

[Lilith7]

Neo liberalism, favouring corporations, the future

"Each time govts offer tax breaks & environmental deregulation ÔÇô without due diligence, proper oversight, reasonable checks & balances, financial subsidies ÔÇô to corporations whose sole object is profit, social democracy is placed in jeopardy. Every instance, every example, every precedent where govts have turned a blind eye to corporate maleficence or allowed their social services to be monetized & put into the absolute control of private enterprise repeats ChamberlainÔÇÖs folly at Munich. There can be no peace or economic equality in our times if power is concentrated in a handful of individuals or corporations.

We can either bear witness to the end of the progressive era, or we can work together & keep social democracy from capsizing into a sea of corporate self-interest. We must not let our history be written in the boardrooms of hedge funds & conglomerates, or else we will cease to be a fee people.

The current financial tempest has not been caused by a natural recalibrations, but by a deliberate attempt to readdress the rights earned by workers & the middle classes since 1945. The chains of ignorance & the fetters of poverty that my ancestors & my generation wore are being refitted to modern citizens. Why is this so?
In my opinion it is because the common peopleÔÇÖs right to a dignified life is no longer protected by law or custom. This country once had a vision & a road map to lead each of us to future prosperity. That map has been replaced with a kind of neo liberalism that is frog marching us back to a time that was best left to history.

This emergency is as dire as the economic crisis of 1933 or the threat we faced in 2939. Our survival as a people & nation is at risk, & unless we combat the forces that have monetized our social services & weakened our democratic institutions we will each suffer in our own separate ways. Many of us are suffering already.
It has to stop, & a strong anti-lobbyist bill has to be introduced. We have to have a law that bars former politicians, their spouses & their children from working as lobbyists for ten years after they have left Whitehall."



social welfare state, taxes

"The social welfare state protected the country from the horrors of endemic poverty or ill health, & it propelled the country forward. By the 19502 & 60s our young, regardless of their class received a comprehensive education that allowed them to navigate a job market that required employees to be familiar with changing technologies in shipbuilding, steel manufacturing, mining & factory assembly lines. It has to be remembered that the social welfare state was not constructed during fair weather days, but at the end of the second world war. The costs to reconstruct BritainÔÇÖs social & industrial infrastructure were enormous, but it was done. We built this new society while repaying the billions we borrowed to wage war for democracyÔÇÖs survival.

The social welfare state was created with prudence, foresight & was paid for through enlightened taxation. The govt levied an income tax that was progressive & fair on both individuals & corporations. The rate was high; in some instances 50 or 60%.
However, we must not forget that for over a millennium the richest families of the realm, along with their industries, hoarded their wealth & paid little or no tax to keep the ship of state afloat.
History teaches us that when taxes were not properly levied, slums flourished, epidemics raged & crime was rampant. A two tier society, cruelly divided by prosperity & poverty, was created. When the welfare state was born, the govt & many of this countryÔÇÖs inhabitants agreed that paying tax was a civic responsibility."


HarryÔÇÖs last stand; how the world my generation built is falling down & what we can do to save it, Harry Leslie Smith.

[Lilith7]

"Charter schools
The secretary of education wants teacherÔÇÖs salaries to be based on their performance as instructors & determined by the exam results of their students. This proposed method would reduce teachers to pedagogical assembly line workers whose wage is set by the amount of widgets created rather than in the craftsmanship it takes to produce an educated citizen. GovtÔÇÖs belief that competition by schools for the best students & best teachers will improve our overall education system is not only erroneous, but would prove lethal to our state run schools. All it will encourage is the flight of our best human capital to private institutions.


unemployment
It was crass, inhumane & malicious of this govt to show no mercy to the unemployed, the disabled, & the disadvantaged during the financial crisis. That it continues to behave like a bully to those down on their luck makes me think the govtÔÇÖs cruelty is deliberate. They want to change society to reflect only the interest of our corporations & the 10 percent of the population who profit from inordinately from a system that chastises people, through lack of opportunity, for being poor or ordinary workers.


Favoring businesses
In the name of efficiency, govts have delegated the shape & scope of 21st century society to corporations, through privatization schemes in schooling, medicine & the delivery of social services. Where once govt spent enormous amounts on maintaining our communities, our hospitals & urban & rural landscapes, they now advance it to companies in the form of subsidies, tax forgiveness, or just good old fashioned bailouts.
Economists call it synergy, but I think its just welfare for the big lads of commerce.
Yet this social & financial inversion, where wealthy enterprises were shored up with govt money that could have been spent on affordable housing, infrastructure maintenance, school & hospital budgets, services to pensioners & job training for the unemployed, persisted throughout the recession to other corporate sectors of our economy."



HarryÔÇÖs last stand; how the world my generation built is falling down & what we can do to save it, Harry Leslie Smith.

[Lilith7]

"Unemployment
The govt wants the public to believe that the cause of our recession was not the gluttony of the financial sector or corporations refusing to pay their fair share of tax, but the fault of the lowly benefit seeker. This is why the govt has made it harder for the newly unemployed to collect welfare, Now theyÔÇÖll have to wait 7 days before they can sign up to their job-seeker benefits.
It is a punitive measure that is intended to humble the unemployed.

For the unemployed these are dark, grim days, especially in the economically ravaged north. The cause is not, as some politicians have reported, that the British born job seekers are too demanding when it comes to employment. It has nothing to do with lack of initiative or sloth; it is that the job market has become so competitive that employers are not compelled to offer living wages with decent benefits.

We must develop a plan to provide affordable & decent housing for the 21st century, because what we have now is only benefiting the speculators. If the govt doesnÔÇÖt get a grip on this crisis, the younger generation will naturally lose faith in our current political & economic process.
Foodbanks, loan sharke
When I hear of payday loan sharks, of food banks, of housing shortages, of medicine as something you pay for or go without & of a decent education as something only for a certain sort, it is not shock I feel but a sense of recognition.
Nothing ever changes."


HarryÔÇÖs last stand; how the world my generation built is falling down & what we can do to save it, Harry Leslie Smith.



" A child in a tantrum who destroys something irreplaceable & suddenly realises he has gone too far. In the past he has been indulged or perhaps only overlooked. But what he has done now cannot be overlooked. What he has done cannot be explained away. What he has done has damned him utterly."

Sheri Tepper, Raising the stones.

[Lilith7]

ÔÇ£When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived at all,ÔÇØ the bookÔÇÖs second paragraph begins in a famous passage. ÔÇ£It was, of course, a miserable childhood: The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

Frank McCourt, AngelaÔÇÖs ashes


"What is repeatedly happening in Christchurch is many insurers denying & reducing policy holders claims, routinely refusing to pay market prices for homes & replacement of contents, use of ÔÇÿlow-pitchedÔÇÖ computer programmes to cut payouts, changes of policy coverage with no clear explanation, ignoring or altering engineering reports, & sometimes asking their adjusters to slow down claim progress or lie to customers. Then the insurers make low offers or refuse to pay at all.

They stall until claimants are so desperate that they are then prepared or forced by circumstances to accept what the insurers offer them.
Sarah Miles, (CHCH investment banking lawyer with experience in the insurance sector) The Christchurch fiasco:The insurance aftershock & its implications for New Zealand & beyond.
Such techniques have been employed before to profitable purpose. In America for example, following the devastation unleashed by hurricane Katrina in August 2005, property-casualty insurers reported record profits of up to 49 percent.

By way of illustration of that abuse & its deliberate cynicism, Miles mentions a logo that featured on the internal documents of an American insurance company, Allstate:it was an alligator, captioned simply ÔÇÿSit & Wait.ÔÇÖ"

Fiona Farrell, the villa at the edge of the empire

[Lilith7]

ÔÇ£Life itself is an exile. The way home is not the way back.ÔÇØ
Colin Wilson, The outsider

ÔÇ£You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of viewÔÇôuntil you climb into his skin and walk around in it.ÔÇØ
Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird

'The only plausible case for capital punishment, among those who believe the state has the right to kill in the interests of social order, is not the fiction that it ÔÇÿ deters ÔÇÿ people from murder ÔÇô although it may indeed may make some think twice ÔÇô but that it gets rid of mad-dog sociopaths whose life, if preserved with even the slightest hope of eventual freedom, would be a lethal menace to innocent & ill-protected people. Obviously, few murderers belong in this category.ÔÇÖ
Robert Hughes, The fatal shore