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Quote by Bethany Brookshire

“So much of our surprise, our fear, and our vindictiveness when faced with a pest is a result of our own ignorance. When we see a coyote in the street, a rat in our trash can, or a squirrel in the attic, we are at a loss. When we don't know what to do, we feel helpless. Vulnerable. When we realize how helpless we are, shame follows immediately behind. We want the problem—and the animal causing our shame—to go away.”

Quote by Bethany Brookshire

Book:Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains
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Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains

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Bethany Brookshire

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“Gradually these situations arise, she can see that now, just one step after another, and by the time a few weeks or months have passed, your life is no longer recognizable. You are lying to almost everyone you know. You have come to care passionately, too fully and completely, for an unsuitable person. You can no longer visualize your own future: not only five years from now, but five months, even five weeks. Everything is in disarray. All this for one person, for the relation that exists between you. Your fidelity to the idea of that reason. In the light of that, you have come to hold too loosely many other important things: the respect of your family, the admiration of your colleagues and acquaintances, even the understanding of your closest friends. Life, after all, has not slipped free of its netting, holding people in place, making sense of things. It is not possible to tear away the constraints and simply carry on a senseless existence. People, other people make it impossible. But without other people, there would be no life at all. Judgement, reprisal, disappointment, conflict: these are the means by which people remain connected to one another. Because of Margaret's friends, her former marriage, her family, colleagues, people in town, she is not entirely free to live the limitless spontaneous life that she has imagined for herself. But because of Ivan, because of whatever there is between them, she is, on the other hand, not entirely free to return to her previous existence either. The demands of other people do not dissolve; they only multiply. More and more complex, more difficult. Which is another way, she thinks, of saying: more life, more and more of life.”

HumanityRelationshipsSociety
Book:Intermezzo
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“Cuando tenía doce años vi cómo se llevaban a una niña de la biblioteca pública porque era de tercera clase. La registraron y le vaciaron los bolsillos, que tenía llenos de páginas arrancadas de Cuento de Navidad, de Dickens. Me impresionó su acto de vandalismo, pero aún más su determinación de acceder a la literatura. El sistema de clases fomenta la ambición, me explicó más tarde el tío Thomas. ¿Habría deseado tan desesperadamente leer el libro esa niña si lo tuviera permitido? --- Capitulo 5.”

HumanityRacismPolitica
Book:A Language of Dragons
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