#we

My belief, for what it is worth, is that city dwellers cannot understand the world. Insulated from reality by complex and expert systems of provision and police, baffled by fashion and spectacle, city dwellers can distinguish neither the sources of their existence nor the consequences. ↗

— James Buchan

#belief #cannot #city #complex #consequences

I used to lie between cool, clean sheets at night after I'd had a bath, after I had washed my hair and scrubbed my knuckles and finger-nails and teeth. Then I could lie quite still in the dark with my face to the window with the trees in it, and talk to God. ↗

— Frances Farmer

#bath #between #clean #cool #could

Suicidal violence is not the exclusive property of the Muslim world. Suicide bombings were a tactic of nationalist struggles in 19th-century Europe and Russia, the far east during the second world war and the Vietnam war, and in modern Sri Lanka. ↗

— James Buchan

#bombings #during #east #europe #exclusive

The dividing line between wish and need was never clear. ↗

— James Buchan

#clear #dividing #dividing line #line #need

I was watching TV and saw people with masks, weapons, and grenades. I thought, Is that really possible? Could we be here yet again? And go into civil war one more time? ↗

— Nadine Labaki

#civil #civil war #could #go #grenades

The world dominion of western thought, forms of organisation, technology and military force is not God-given, nor eternal, nor greatly appreciated by the rest of the world. ↗

— James Buchan

#dominion #eternal #force #forms #god-given

The year 2008 was a reminder to those who had forgotten that there is such a thing as history and that the cycle of famine and feast in commerce, first identified in antiquity and well understood in the Middle Ages, was not suddenly abolished in modern times. ↗

— James Buchan

#antiquity #commerce #cycle #famine #feast

But I was sure of one thing. If God were a father, with children, that cleanliness I had been feeling wasn't God. ↗

— Frances Farmer

#children #cleanliness #father #feeling #god

There are signs that the age of petroleum has passed its zenith. Adjusted for inflation, a barrel of crude oil now sells for three times its long-run average. The large western oil companies, which cartellised the industry for much of the 20th century, are now selling more oil than they find, and are thus in the throes of liquidation. ↗

— James Buchan

#adjusted #age #average #barrel #century

The more people pointed at me in scorn the more stubborn I got and when they began calling me the Bad Girl of West Seattle High, I tried to live up to it. ↗

— Frances Farmer

#bad girl #began #calling #girl #got