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"Systemic racism is a machine that runs whether we pull the levers or not, and by just letting it be, we are responsible for what it produces. We have to actually dismantle the machine if we want to make change."

Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

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"Perhaps this is how racism feels no matter the context--randomly the rules everyone else gets to play by no longer apply to you, and to call this out by calling out "I swear to God!" is to be called insane, crass, crazy."

-Claudia Rankine, Citizen

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All that is really going in your mouth is texture and chemicals. It is your brain that reads these scentless, flavorless molecules and vivifies them for your pleasure. Your brownie is sheet music. It is your brain that makes it a symphony.

Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants

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Freedom of expression truly exists only when a society’s most repugnant nitwits are allowed to spew their nonsense in public.

Sarah Vowell, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

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Oh, if only that was the last time in America that the extreme left and extreme right broke down and made a mess of things, leaving everyone in the center to suffer.

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, Sarah Vowell

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As the starstruck Lafayette later described his first glimpse of Washington, "It was impossible to mistake for a moment his majestic figure and deportment; nor was he less distinguished by the noble affability of his manner." What a sweet memory. Still, it does get on my nerves how easy it is for tall people to make a good first impression.

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, Sarah Vowell

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How often are we so bored and anesthetized by our routines--in our safe surroundings-- that we lose all sense of what's magical about our existence?

The Tenth Girl, Sara Faring, p 48

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All is muddled and uncertain. The writing of history is often another way of defining chaos

Foundation The History of England from its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors by Peter Ackroyd

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Faith is a choice; anyone who says otherwise is trying to convert you.

Reza Aslan, God: A Human History

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I used to think that grief was about looking backward, old men saddled with regrets or young ones pondering should-haves. I see now that it is about eyes squinting through tears into an unbearable future. The world cannot be remade by the sheer force of love. A brutal world demands capitulation to what seems impossible--separation. Brokeness. An end without an ending.

Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

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Conditional love is: I will only love you if you love me. Unconditional love is: I will love you even if you do not love me. It’s really easy to love passing strangers unconditionally. They demand nothing of you. It is really hard to love people unconditionally when they can hurt you.

Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking

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The zero-degree parallel of latitude is fixed by the laws of nature, while the zero-degree meridian of longitude shifts like the sands of time.

Dava Sobel, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

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He wrested the world's whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch.

Dava Sobel, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

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“We pray for all the people of Your world, our sisters and brothers whose names we may not know but whose lives are ultimately precious in Your sight. With all our hearts, we pray for all Your children everywhere—yes, everywhere.”

Fred Rogers, from The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers by Amy Hollingsworth

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Antiracists of all races—whether out of altruism or intelligent self-interest—would always recognize that preserving racial hierarchy simultaneously preserves ethnic, gender, class, sexual, age, and religious hierarchies. Human hierarchies of any kind, they understood, would do little more than oppress all of humanity.

Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning

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He didn't let me say a word. I have to take the word from him. He gave me a long life but a small one. I need room, I need air.

Ursula K. Le Guin, Lavinia

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And this is what I learned: that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness--the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books--can re-dignify the worst-strung heart.

Mary Oliver, Staying Alive