Phoebe S. > Phoebe's Quotes

“To a very great extent human history has been the story of the unequal accumulation of harvested wealth, shifting from one centre of power to another, while always expanding the four great inequalities. This is history. Nowhere, as far as I know, has there ever been a civilization or moment when the wealth of the harvests, created by all, has been equitably distributed. Power has been exerted wherever it can be, and each successful coercion has done its part to add to the general inequality, which has risen in direct proportion to the wealth gathered; for wealth and power are much the same. The possessors of the wealth in effect buy the armed power they need to enforce the growing inequality. And so the cycle continues.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt

“Love is a house with many rooms, this room to feed the love, this one to entertain it, this one to clean it, this one to dress it, this one to allow it to rest, and each of these rooms can also just as well be the room for laughing or the room for listening or the room for apologizing or the room for intimate togetherness, and, of course, there are the rooms for the new members of the household.”
― Yann Martel, The High Mountains of Portugal

“That is Christianity at heart: a single miracle surrounded and sustained by stories, like an island surrounded by the sea.”
― Yann Martel, The High Mountains of Portugal

“Is this what makes people old, then? Not age, or decrepitude, but grief?”
― Joseph D. Carriker Jr., Sacred Band