We are what we fear in others - Mary Doria Russell

No one who does not live with constant pain can imagine the toll it takes. The way it grinds you down. The sheer damnable tedium of it.

Every one of them has a story, and every story begins with a man who failed her. A husband who came home from the war, good for nothin' but drink. A father who didn't come home at all, or a stepfather who did. A brother who should have protected her. A beau who promised marriage and left when he got what he wanted, because he wouldn't marry a slut. If a girl like that has lost her way, it's-because some worthless no-account-sonofabitch left her in the wilderness alone!

I think the world will be a better place when science has swept all religions into the dustbin of history. What is religion but a shared belief in things that cannot be known.