Words&Dirt

“As he walked past the ruins, the prospect of building a new cathedral suddenly seemed daunting: all that stone, all that timber, all those craftsmen, all those years. He would have to control it all, make sure there was a steady supply of materials, monitor the quality of timber and stone, hire and fire men, tirelessly check their work with his plumb line and level, make templates for the moldings, design and build lifting machines…He wondered if he really was capable of it.

Then he thought what a trill it would be to create something from nothing; to see, one day in the future, a new church here where now there was nothing but rubble, and to say: I made this.”

––The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett, loc. 5229

“You can only dehumanize an enemy from a distance.”

––Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror, by Michael V. Hayden, pg. 238