“So I kept going. It made my position here. It established my presence and my credibility. And it was terrifying— though it ended up being phenomenal.”
“Although you may not always be able to avoid difficult situations,you can modify the extent to which you can suffer by how you choose to respond to the situation.”
“Certainly there are very real differences between us... But it is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences…”
“ . . . He knews that the tale he had to tell could not be one of a final victory. It could be only the record of what had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts . . . by all who . . . strive their utmost to be healers.”
“He leaned on the arms of Damiana Cisneros and made an effort to walk. After a few steps he collapsed, pleading inside, but without saying a single word. He hit the ground and crumbled, as if he were nothing more than a pile of stones.”
“This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.”
“I was less interested in the question of what would happen if we quit sacrifice bunting and more interested in the question of whether we could persuade people to do it because it’s good and right and rational.”
“The view that people in the future matter just as much as us has deep practical implications. We have a long way to go if we are to understand these and integrate them fully into our moral thinking.”
“[T]here seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labor of the novelist and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them... [novels are works] in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.”
“The rich world which [the enslaved] of the Caribbean created to protect themselves...is crucial to understanding how news, ideas, and social excitement traveled in the electric political environment of the late eighteenth century.”
