Robin

“Politics is ugly. Never doubt what small men will do for great power.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Windup Girl

“Why is it necessary to everyone to read the classics? Shouldn't only specialists spend their time on these texts, with other people devoting their efforts to particular interests of their own? Actually, it is precisely because these works are intended for *all* that they have become classics. They have been tried and tested and deemed valuable for the general culture --- the way in which people live their lives. They have been found to enhance and elevate the consciousness of all sorts and conditions of people who study them, to lift their readers out of narrowness or provincialism into a wider vision of humanity. Further, they guard the truths of the human heart from the faddish half-truths of the day by straightening the mind and imagination and enabling their readers to judge for themselves. In a word, they lead those who will follow into a perception of the fullness and complexity of reality.”
― Louise Cowan, Invitation to the Classics: A Guide to Books You've Always Wanted to Read

“But I hope I will never have a life that is not surrounded by books, by books that are bound in paper and cloth and glue, such perishable things for ideas have lasted thousands of years . . . I hope I am always walled in by the very weight and breadth and clumsy, inefficient, antiquated bulk of them, hope that I spend my last days on this Earth arranging and rearranging them on thrones of good, honest pine, oak, and mahogany, because I just like to look at their covers, and dream of the promise of the great stories inside.”
― Rick Bragg

“who am i, really? What does any of it mean? i'm so afraid someday everyone will see that i'm just an imposter, a fake, among all the real and gorgeous godheads.
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― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams