“There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro

“All my life I have lied. I lied to escape, I lied to be loved, I lied for placement and power; I lied to lie. It was a way of living; lies are life's almost-anagram.”
― John Banville, Shroud

“I remember a lot of dreams. Sometimes they are hard to distinguish from what has really happened. That is not so terrible. It is the same with books.”
― Per Petterson, In the Wake

“Mr. Durukan, if God is dead then everything is conspiracy.”
― Ian McDonald, The Dervish House

“If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“The heart has its own laws... and the truth is... the truth is that you are the law of mine.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“Midlife is when you have to accept what you've created, knowing that the life you have is is the only one you'll live. And that can be terrifying, until you accept it, and then you are free of terror.”
― Dean Bakopoulos, Summerlong

“It’s worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns. Trump won’t read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored. And his staff is no better. Kushner is an entitled baby who knows nothing. Bannon is an arrogant prick who thinks he’s smarter than he is. Trump is less a person than a collection of terrible traits. No one will survive the first year but his family.”
― Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House

“Donald Trump believed he had vastly more power, authority, and control than in fact he had, and he believed his talent for manipulating people and bending and dominating them was vastly greater than it was. Pushing this line of reasoning just a little further: senior staff believed the president had a problem with reality, and reality was now overwhelming him.”
― Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House

“Although the Republicans in the 2018 congressional races were looking, according to Bannon’s numbers, at a 15-point deficit, it was Bannon’s belief that the more extreme the right-wing challenge appeared, the more likely the Democrats would field left-wing nutters even less electable than right-wing nutters.”
― Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House

“The president was speaking as if the U.S. military was a mercenary force for hire. If a country wouldn’t pay us to be there, then we didn’t want to be there. As if there were no American interests in forging and keeping a peaceful world order, as if the American organizing principle was money.”
― Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House

“Trump had failed the President Lincoln test. He had not put a team of political rivals or competitors at the table, Priebus concluded. “He puts natural predators at the table,” Priebus said later. “Not just rivals—predators.”
― Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House

“If you have natural predators at the table,” Priebus said, “things don’t move.” So the White House was not leading on key issues like health care and tax reform. Foreign policy was not coherent and often contradictory. “Why?” asked Priebus. “Because when you put a snake and a rat and a falcon and a rabbit and a shark and a seal in a zoo without walls, things start getting nasty and bloody. That’s what happens.”
― Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House

“Borglin says the news can be so biased that it provides a slanted filter instead of delivering just straight news. “My kids are very susceptible to that,” she says, explaining that they don’t understand they are only seeing one point of view instead of the whole story. “Even though I think my kids are intelligent enough, it’s what’s coming at them all the time. And a lot of what portrayed itself as news, isn’t really news, it was propaganda. And they saw it as, sometimes there was truth, but a lot of times there wasn’t. And then all of the things you taught them start coming apart,” she says.”
― Salena Zito, The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics

“The individual voters featured in this book come from ten counties that switched allegiances from Barack Obama in 2012 to Donald Trump in 2016, in the five pivotal Great Lakes or Rust Belt states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Those counties were chosen to ensure as much variety among the population tiers listed above as is possible.”
― Salena Zito, The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics

“the craggy gorge reminded me that we can proceed in our lives just as easily from love to love as from loss to loss. A good thing to remember in the middle of the night when you’re not sure how you will get through the next three breaths.”
― Peter Heller, The Painter

“I never write metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop.
”
― Mark Twain, Mark Twain's Speeches