d

“It’s terrible to confirm that a system born to rescue human dignity has resorted to rewards, glorification, the encouragement of denunciations, and feeds on everything that is humanly vile. I feel the nausea rise in my throat when I hear people say: they’ve shot M., they’ve shot P., shot, shot, shot. The words, after hearing them so much, lose their meaning. The people say them with greater calm, as if they were saying: we’re going to the theater. I, who lived these years in fear and felt the compulsion to denounce (I confess so with terror, but without any feeling of guilt), have lost in my mind the brutal semantics of the verb ‘to shoot’ … I feel that we’ve reached the end of justice on earth, the limits of human dignity.”
― Leonardo Padura, The Man Who Loved Dogs

“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

“Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five