Scott

“She did not read, she did nothing at all, and hours went by during which even her thoughts came to a standstill. At times she would abruptly throw herself on the floor and lie there pressing her face to the carpet with her eyes tightly closed, until a knock at the door – the maid bringing her lunch tray – made her scramble to her feet in sudden fright.”
― Louis Couperus, Eline Vere

“The reasoning here is typical of Kershaw’s work, which is marred by his describing everything, and I mean everything, about Hitler extremely negatively, even such aspects as relate to his childhood and youth, as if his whole life were tainted by what he would become and do some twenty years later, as if in some way he were evil incarnate, or as if evil were some core inside him, immutable and irremediable, and thereby an explanation of why things turned out the way they did.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 6

“When Salman Rushdie became the victim of Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa, the writer V. S. Naipaul refused to support him, on the grounds that the fatwa was, after all, only an extreme form of literary criticism.”
― Philippe Lançon, Disturbance

“So-called street canyons in dense cities can create microclimates. Arrayed along rectilinear city grids, sets of skyscrapers can effectively increase wind speeds. Depending on their geometries, clusters can also raise temperatures by capturing solar energy or trapping warm air, thereby exacerbating existing urban heat island effects. In some cases, street canyons channel aerial pollutants up and out of the way—arguably a net benefit to the citizens below—but in other places, tall towers can collectively trap and recirculate smog in undesirable holding patterns.”
― Roman Mars, The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design