“Still, the age of [working the system, climbing the ladder, choosing lesser evils] was long past. Systems were broken, and ladders had turned to slides long before either of us. Lesser evils had leveled out into equal ones, burgeoning ones, inevitable ones. A place like the valley wasn't birthed from one legislative oversight, but from a spectacular compounding of societal failures, and, in the face of that, one spot of incidental kindness was only a bandage waiting to be bled through.”
Book:Local Heavens