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61 " By the numbers, Accomack could look like a desolate place to live. The Opportunity Index, a nonprofit measurement of sixteen different indicators of success in every county in America, gives it a forty-three out of one hundred. But numbers can be misleading. To residents, statistics could not account for the deep feeling of belonging that came from being able to find your surname in three hundred-year-old county records. They couldn't account for how clean the air felt and how orange the sun was setting over the Chesapeake Bay. "
― Monica Hesse , American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land
62 " To talk about arson is to talk about buildings burning down. To talk about the term 'pyromania' is really to talk about the unfathomable mysteries of the human brain and the human heart: Why do we do things? Why do we want things? What moves us, and stirs us, and why are some people moved by the things that the rest of us find inexplicable or abhorrent?Some arsonists go into treatment and are cured, though those are often the arsonists whose fire setting was a by-product of another mental illness. Some arsonists take well to the therapy, pronounce themselves cured, and then leave treatment and immediately burn down another house. No one really knows why. Because, despite all of the research and studying that scientists have put into understanding arsonists over the years, there's a piece of the puzzle that remains inexplicable: Some people light things on fire because they feel like they have to. "
63 " I don't know which is more unfathomable to me: the base evil and cruelty of the Holocaust, or the undying hope that survivors managed to take out of it. I don't know which is more unfathomable, but I do know which we should inspire to. "
― Monica Hesse , They Went Left
64 " The war didn't end people's prejudice. "
65 " Busyness can be a relieving antidote to a lot of things: grief, awkwardness, confusion. "
66 " A long time before Bas died, we had a pretend argument about whose fault it was that he'd fallen in love with me. It's your fault, he told me. Because you're lovable. "
― Monica Hesse , Girl in the Blue Coat
67 " The firefighters of Accomack County would be called out two more times that night. They would be called out eighty-six times total over the next five months. "