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25.01.2022 'When I read, the real world disappears and only the invented world of the book remains. It's like stepping through a gateway into another time or another world, like slipping inside someone else's skin. While I am there, I can dance with dryads, or struggle with my own shadow upon an uncharted sea, or huddle in hiding from a Black Rider. I know what it's like to be a rabbit shivering in the heather, watching my warren being bulldozed. I know how it feels to be poor, obscure, little and plain, yet to love with all my heart. Whatever tribulations I suffer in the world of the book, whatever triumphs I win, they change me as if they had really happened. Whatever I learn returns with me to the real world.' 'Books Are Dangerous' by Kate Forsyth (from The Simple Act of Reading, edited by Debra Adelaide)

20.01.2022 'I didn't shout; I didn't scream. I thought about how crazy it was that my life was going to end like this. I and everyone else on the bus knew that as one of the most obvious organisers of the protests at our school I would certainly go to prison. Most of the other girls stood at least some chance of being set free after a warning, but not me. I was standing near the back door. The girls around me started looking at each other, at me and at the door. They nudged me closer to it. When the bus had to stop at an intersection they pushed as hard as they could on the doors. No-one said a word. They just looked at each other and pushed. The doors opened just enough for me to squeeze through and I jumped out.' Mahboba's Promise by Mahboba Rawi

15.01.2022 'Social scientists in the 1970s broadly accepted two ideas about human nature. First, people are generally rational, and their thinking is normally sound. Second, emotions such as fear, affection, and hatred explain most of the occasions when people depart from rationality. Our article challenged these assumptions ... We documented systematic errors in the thinking of normal people, and we traced these errors to the design of the machinery of cognition rather than the corruption of thought by emotion.' Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

12.01.2022 'The boy sits down, right where he'd stood. She gathers the dishes and stacks them in the sink. She goes and sits down under the portrait that dominates the room. She lights a cigarillo, and starts talking to herself. "Once I had to work at horrible jobs to earn enough money to buy food to eat in order to live to work at horrible jobs to earn enough ... I hated that life. I hated it to my bones. So I quit. I did what my heart told me to do, and painted for my living.... I didn't earn enough to live on, but I wasn't too unhappy, because I was loved at home and I loved what I was doing. Money was the only problem ... then it all changed. I won a lottery. I invested it. I earned a fortune by fast talking. And while I was busy blessing the god of munificence, the lightning came. It blasted my family, and it blasted my painting talent ..." She leans back against the wall, and knocks the edge of the portrait. "That is an enlargement of a painting by Fujiware Takanobu. He was a genius, who could capture a soul in limning and pigment, and do this in such an ascetically elegant way that the heart stands still to see it ... one time, I could do something like that. Not anymore, o child, not anymore ..."' The Bone People by Keri Hulme

12.01.2022 https://www.balancethegrind.com.au//alison-fraser-managin/

03.01.2022 'I watched an old man stagger down the opposite side of the road. He was small and square, and had caught my eye because of his tomato-red sweater, which burst out from beneath his standard-issue pensioner greys and muted pastels. Almost in slow motion, the man began to weave and wobble erratically, swaying from side to side, his bulging carrier bags creating a sort of human pendulum. "Drunk in the daytime," I said quietly, more to myself than to Raymond. Raymond opened ...his mouth to reply when the old man finally toppled, fell backwards hard, and laid still. His shopping exploded around him, and I noticed he'd bought Tunnack's Caramel Logs and a jumbo pack of sausages. "Shit," said Raymond, stabbing at the button on the crossing control. "Leave him," I said. "He's drunk. He'll be fine." Raymond stared at me. "He's a wee old man, Eleanor. He smacked his head on that pavement pretty hard," he said. Then I felt bad. Even alcoholics deserve help, I suppose, although they should get drunk at home, like I do, so they don't cause anyone else any trouble. But then, not everyone is as sensible and considerate as me.' Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman