Rob

“Isn’t it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father’s roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Learning about ancient realities challenges the common tendency to assume that ancient people’s lives and experiences were essentially the same as modern people’s, only without electricity.”
― Matthew L. Skinner, A Companion to the New Testament: The Gospels and Acts

“They all blur together these days—the smell of manure and buttered popcorn, urine and cotton candy, hay and innocence. He wrings his hands again and then stands up. Bob hobbles over to the corner, goosebumps rippling across his flesh, and he begins to wash off the cloud of white, his costume of the day, the way he is able to meander through any festive occasion with hardly a worry—balloons in hand, a smile on his face, knots twisting in his gut, blood filling his shoes.”
― Richard Thomas

“Dictators and despots, governors and generals–they all too often resort to brute force to prevent scenarios that exist only in their own heads, on the assumption that the average Joe is ruled by self-interest, just like them.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History