Joe Lawrence

“A perfect thing is not everything.”
― Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

“I never saw a tree that was no tree in particular.”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

“If you found yourself upset at some other society’s customs, Boas argued, the truly scientific thing to do was to analyze your own reaction. It was probably a good clue to the things that your own culture held dear. The best data generator was your own sense of disgust.”
― Charles King, Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century

“I, and I only, am to blame for all their sins; I spoiled them. To-day they are as eager for pleasure as they used to be for sugar-plums. When they were little girls I indulged them in every whim. They had a carriage of their own when they were fifteen. They have never been crossed. I am guilty, and not they—but I sinned through love.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot