Emma

“I found that reading gave me a certain relief – one form of escapism that seemed safe, and maybe more than safe. I felt saner – less fragmented- after reading for an hour.
location 3234”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“The secretary of education recently unveiled an initiative for curriculums to place more emphasis on history and language. Within the decade, proficiency in at least three languages will be required of all American schoolchildren by graduation. And along with its other recommendations, the CDC has issued a promulgation that every U.S. citizen “unplug” for at least two hours each day.
location 6374”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“Have you forgotten what we are to say to ourselves every morning? 'Today I shall meet cruel men, cowards and liars, the envious and the drunken. They will be like that because they do not know what is good from what is bad. This is an evil which has fallen upon them not upon me. They are to be pitied, not...”
― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

“Alongside the favored palazzos lurked their dark, ignored sisters, the city’s abandoned children, tilting into muddy solitude from which they could never be extracted.”
― Christine Evelyn Volker, Venetian Blood: Murder in a Sensuous City