Kerry

“Today's Republican Party...is an insurgent outlier. It has become ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, all but declaring war on the government. The Democratic Party, while no paragon of civic virtue, is more ideologically centered and diverse, protective of the government's role as it developed over the course of the last century, open to incremental changes in policy fashioned through bargaining with the Republicans, and less disposed to or adept at take-no-prisoners conflict between the parties. This asymmetry between the parties, which journalists and scholars often brush aside or whitewash in a quest for "balance," constitutes a huge obstacle to effective governance.”
― Thomas E. Mann, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the Politics of Extremism

“You want to know what’s on the other side?’
Walsh eyed the detective carefully, as if gauging the seriousness of the question.
‘Is it seventy-two virgins, like the Muslims believe?’
‘That’s the good news. The bad news is that they’re all guys. It’s like being at a boarding school.’
‘I knew there had to be a catch.”
― John Connolly, A Song of Shadows

“We try to abolish intervals by our manic insistence on keeping busy, on doing something. And as a result, all we succeed in doing is destroying all hope of tranquility.

... . You have to learn to immerse yourself in the silences between.”
― Lyall Watson, Gifts of Unknown Things: A True Story of Nature, Healing, and Initiation from Indonesia's Dancing Island

“The first colonial teenagers rejected their parents’ values, as teenagers have done ever since Cain and Abel decided to get away from all that hippy nature stuff. They were sober, industrious and, if truth be told, not much fun. They laboured uncomplainingly in the sun, exercised in the fresh air, swam in the sea and were, on average, six inches taller than the malnourished British stock from which they had sprung. Within a single generation, the Artful Dodger had transformed into Chesty Bond.”
― David Hunt, Girt