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21 " How foolish it seemed now to label anything “of the century.” This one was still a teenager with an anger-management problem and a long future ahead. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , Unsheltered
22 " times than we ever have known. "
23 " I’m saying when God slams a door on you it’s probably a shitstorm. You’re going to end up in rubble. But it’s okay because without all that crap overhead, you’re standing in the daylight. "
24 " No rational guidelines existed for comparing youthful freedom with the heart-enlarging earthquake of family life. "
25 " He’s legitimizing personal greed as the principal religion of our country. "
26 " If that is our nature, then nature is madness. These are more dangerous times than we ever have known. "
27 " So much energy squandered in the unwinnable war waged by woman against the life-form she is. "
28 " Of course the scientist’s position is subordinate. Our task is to make our fussy natures invisible against the mechanisms of the universe. Truth is not ours to find within, but to search out. We study the known world in order to recognize the remarkable. "
29 " How dire was the descent of a man’s life, Thatcher mused, that he should now be stricken with spider jealousy. "
30 " Willa’s lifelong service to the duty of proper order now seemed like an idiot’s game. "
31 " Without shelter, we stand in daylight. "
32 " We try to reason with one another, but only manage to tear ourselves apart. "
33 " When men fear the loss of what they know, they will follow any tyrant who promises to restore the old order.” “If that is our nature, then nature is madness. These are more dangerous times than we ever have known.” * "
34 " To have been made the creatures we are is a marvel. If the process required millennia rather than seven days, how can it be any less sublime? "
35 " Every education brings a point of reckoning, and this was his: seeing the world divided in two camps, the investigators and the sweeteners "
36 " How are people so irrational?” he asked, but he knew. Even the abolitionists had no wish to be placed inside creation, subject to its laws. They wished to rule over it from the head of God’s table. "
37 " So if it’s not this exact prophet of self-indulgence we’re looking to for reassurance, it will be some other liar who’s good at distracting us from the truth. "
38 " At his last checkup the pediatrician had observed the howling red face and trembling limbs, and said that infants process grief as trauma. Then suggested they try a different formula. "
39 " Imagine if each of these grew to be a maple. There should be no room in Vineland for us to stand between them. It’s the same with mice or dandelions. Many more seeds and pups are dropped than may prosper. Otherwise we would be pressed like keepsakes among all the flora and fauna of this planet. Our saving grace, ladies and gentlemen, is what?” He watched mouths move in a silent chorus: Death. “Yes. Our salvation is the reaper. The mouse reaps the seed, the cat reaps the mouse. By its infinite means, death overpowers "
40 " Don’t count on it. There’s a lot of white folks out there hanging on to their God-given right to look down on some other class of people "