Eldon Sortland

“Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“Colonisation is violence, and there are many ways to carry out that violence. In addition to military and administrative chiefs and a veritable army of churchmen, the Belgians dispatched scientists to Rwanda. The scientists brought scales and measuring tapes and callipers, and they went about weighing Rwandans, measuring Rwandan cranial capacities, and conducting comparative analyses of the relative protuberance of Rwandan noses. Sure enough, the scientists found what they had believed all along. Tutsis had a ‘nobler’, more ‘naturally’ aristocratic dimensions than the ‘coarse’ and ‘bestial’ Hutus. On the ‘nasal index’ for instance, the median Tutsi nose was found to be about two and a half millimetres longer and nearly five millimetres narrower than the median Hutu nose.”
― Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda

“No child is born a delinquent. They only became that way if nobody loved them when they were kids. Unloved children grow up to be serial murderers or alcoholics.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“فجأة ما عاد يرى نفسه, أي أنه ما عاد يرى نفسه كجزء من العالم الذي يحيط به. لقد تملكه شعور ليضع ثوان كما لو أنه بعيد جداً في الخارج, كما لو أنه يتأمل العالم بمنظار مقلوب.”
― Patrick Süskind, The Pigeon