J. Tim Willis

“possible topics around which the currents of speech may flow: Death and the danger of death: violence, fighting, sickness, fear, dreams, premonitions and communication with the dead. Sex and relations between the sexes: dating, courtship, proposals, marriage, breaking off relationships, affairs, intermarriage. Moral indignation: assignment and rejection of blame, unfairness, injustice, gossip, violations of social norms.”
― William Labov, The Language of Life and Death: The Transformation of Experience in Oral Narrative

“My dear Prue, we are the inheritors of a wonderful world, a beautiful world, full of life and mystery, goodness and pain. But likewise are we the children of an indifferent universe. We break our own hearts imposing our moral order on what is, by nature, a wide web of chaos. It is a hopeless task.”
― Colin Meloy, Wildwood

“Nihil est in intellectu quod non ante fuerit in sensu,”
― Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

“And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five