Barbara

“You must make your own map of the world. Search out your own piece of sky and patch of earth, your own awning to sleep under when it is raining and it feels the sun may never shine again, for there will certainly be such days. No one can walk this path for you. You cannot simply follow in another's footsteps, as though life were a complicated dance, every turn and twist memorized and prepared for ahead of time. There are many things in the world you can inherit: money, land, power, a crown. But an adventure is not one of them; you must make your own journey.”
― Katherine J. Chen, Joan

“Nebraska made it almost impossible for critics to miss Springsteen's willingness to take a chance in the name of his art. If Springsteen was driven simply by fame and mainstream success, there would have been no good reason to make or release a Nebraska. The album made it impossible to use the word "sellout.”
― Warren Zanes, Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska

“Power changes men, and not for the better or kings and soldiers wouldn't be so merciless. And on such power the world is built: gods and kings at the top, who are bound to no will but their own., then governors and courtiers, then soldiers and so on, until, at the bottom, common people such as herself. All commoners can do is pray and worship, gaining favors with loyalty and adulation. And, of course, subdue those even smaller and weaker than they are.”
― Costanza Casati, Babylonia

“When Washington became president of the United States, he was still wrestling with the meaning of the American Revolution. He'd entered the conflict an unrepentant Virginia slaveholder. By the end of the war, he'd learned that his African-American soldiers were as competent and brave as anyone else in his army. He'd also befriended the idealistic French nobleman Lafayette, who later claimed, "I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America if I could have conceived that thereby I was founding a land of slavery." Gradually, ever so gradually, a new Washington was emerging, one who realized that "nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union, by consolidating bond of principle." But even if he had come to recognize the direction the country must take in the future, he remained a slaveholder himself for the rest of his life. A struggle was being waged inside Washington between his ideological aspirations and his financial and familial commitment to slavery at Mount Vernon. Yes, Washington freed his enslaved workers upon his death, but it had been a very long time in coming. And yet, given where Washington had begun in life--as a slaveholder through inheritance at the age of eleven, when his father died--his eventual decision to free his slaves was no empty gesture.”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy