#no

If you think people in your life are normal, then you undoubtedly have not spent any time getting to know the abnormal side of them. ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#awkward #family #friends #insane #mental-issues

The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good. ↗

— Philip Gourevitch

#apathy #auschewitz #evil #genocide #good

Sometimes I think it is my fate to live in the wreckage and confusion of crumbling houses. ↗

— Abdulrazak Gurnah

#family #novel #family

... it's good to have female or minority role models. But the important thing is to have mentors who care about you, and they come in all colors. ↗

— Condoleezza Rice

#minority #role-models #family

When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy. The way I liked best was letting go a poisonous spider in his bed. It would bite him and he'd be dead and swollen up and I would shudder to find him so. Of course I would call the rescue squad and tell them to come quick something's the matter with my daddy. When they come in the house I'm all in a state of shock and just don't know how to act what with two colored boys heaving my dead daddy onto a roller cot. I just stand in the door and look like I'm shaking all over. But I did not kill my daddy. He drank his own self to death the year after the County moved me out. I heard how they found him shut up in the house dead and everything. Next thing I know he's in the ground and the house is rented out to a family of four. All I did was wish him dead real hard every now and then. All I can say for a fact that I am better off now than when he was alive. ↗

— Kaye Gibbons

#drunk #poisonous-spider #death

We saved the lives of a whole family that night. Children, parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, all sailed to safety in Sweden inside a little fisherman’s boat.” Johannes aka ‘BB’ The Informer by Steen Langstrup ↗

— Steen Langstrup

#noir-fiction #scandinavian-mysteries #world-war-two #family

You'd think (losing his job and degree for having made false claims as a researcher) would be a lesson to him," said Miss Hillyard. "It didn't pay, did it? Say he sacrificed his professional honour for the women and children we hear so much about -- but in the end it left him worse of." But that," said Peter, "was only because he committed the extra sin of being found out. ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#dishonesty #falsification #family #financial-distress #honor

Germans grew reluctant to stay in communal ski lodges, fearing they might talk in their sleep. They postponed surgeries because of the lip-loosening effects of anesthetic. Dreams reflected the ambient anxiety. One German dreamed that an SA man came to his home and opened the door to his oven, which then repeated every negative remark the household had made against the government. ↗

— Erik Larson

#fear #germany #nazis #paranoia #tension

In Africa, there is a birthrate trap: a higher standard of living will lead to smaller families but smaller families will not lead to a higher standard of living. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#birth-rate #family #socioeconomic-failure #socioeconomics #standard-of-living

Even in good families a bad apple can begin an avalanche of troubles,' Dutch said as he sat back in his well-seasoned armchair, lighting his curved rustic pipe. From Book I, In Blood There is No Honor ↗

— Judith-Victoria Douglas

#honor #troubles #family