By age seventeen he [Seymoure Sthulman]'d convinced himself that every human being he saw was a parasite, captive to the dictates of consumption. But… - Anthony Doerr

we are all beautiful even as we are all part of the problem, and that to be a part of the problem is to be human

Radio: it ties a million ears to a single mouth. Out of loudspeakers all around Zollverein, the staccato voice of the Reich grows like some imperturbable tree; its subjects lean toward its branches as if towards the lips of God. And when God stops whispering, they become desperate for someone who can put things right.

To consider water on any scale was to confront a boundless repetition of small events. There were the tiny wonders: rain drops, snow crystals, grains of frost aligned on a blade of grass; and there were the wonders so immense it seemed impossible to get his mind around them: global wind, oceanic currents, storms that broke like waves over whole mountain ranges. p 46

(Rome) is a Metropolitan Museum of Art the size of Manhattan, no roof, no display cases, and half a million combustion engines rumbling in the hallways.