Barry Tomasini

“If SARS had conformed to the perverse pattern of presymptomatic infectivity, its 2003 emergence wouldn’t be a case history in good luck and effective outbreak response. It would be a much darker story. The much darker story remains to be told, probably not about this virus but about another. When the Next Big One comes, we can guess, it will likely conform to the same perverse pattern, high infectivity preceding notable symptoms. That will help it to move through cities and airports like an angel of death.”
― David Quammen, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

“Such lack of understanding was frightening. He’s right, the gunslinger thought. We are broken. Gods help us.”
― Stephen King, Wolves of the Calla

“This and this and this.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Oy sat by Jake’s head, now silent, knowing his howls could no longer be heard by the one for whom he grieved. What the gunslinger feared most had come to pass. While he had been talking to two men he didn’t like, the boy whom he loved more than all others—more than he’d loved anyone ever in his life, even Susan Delgado—had passed beyond him for the second time. Jake was dead.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower