The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson, r. Oct. 2025

p. 109 During one such pause, Churchill likened a man's life to a walk down a passage lined with closed windows. "As you reach each window, an unknown hand opens it and the light it lets in only increases by contrast the darkness of the end of the passage." He danced on.

p. 180 When John Colville read the initial draft, he realized he had heard bits of it before, as Churchill tested ideas and phrases in the course of ordinary conversation. The prime minister also kept snippets of poems and biblical passages in a special "Keep Handy" file. "It is curious," Colville wrote, "to see how, as it were, he fertilizes a phrase or a line of poetry for weeks and then gives birth to it in speech."

p. 192 Churchill slept well, not even waking when the all clear sounded at three forty-five A.M. He always slept well. His ability to sleep anywhere, anytime, was his particular gift. Wrote Pug Ismay, "His capacity for dropping off into a sound sleep the moment his head touched the pillow had to be seen to be believed."

p. 230 [Winston Churchill's 18-year-old daughter, Mary] exulted in her life. "What a wonderful year it has been!" she wrote. "I think it will always stand out in my memory. It has been very happy for me too – despite the misery & unhappiness in the world. I hope that does not mean that I am unfeeling – I really don't think I am, but somehow I just haven't been able to help being happy."

p. 250 Young people were reluctant to contemplate death without having shared their bodies with someone else. It was sex at its sweetest: not for money or marriage, but for love of being alive and wanting to give."

p. 434 [Goebbels's] diary crackled with enthusiasm for the war, and for life. "What a glorious spring day outside!" he wrote. "How beautiful the world can be! And we have no chance to enjoy it. Human beings are so stupid. Life is so short, and they then go and make it so hard for themselves."

p. 483 "I never gave them courage," [Churchill] said. "I was able to focus theirs."

Rabbit, Run by John Updike, r. Jan. 2016

p. 38 Tothero is silent before replying. His great strength is in these silences; he has the disciplinarian's trick of waiting a long moment while his words gather weight.

p. 50 Ruth bends down and slides over. The skin of her shoulder gleams and then dims in the shadow of the booth. Rabbit sits down too and feels her rustle beside him, settling in, the way women do, fussily, as if making a nest.

p. 81 In all the green world nothing feels as good as a woman's good nature.

p. 92 And after you're first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate. And that little thing [marriage] Janice and I had going, boy, it was really second-rate.

p. 96 Pigeons with mechanical heads waddle away from their shoetips and resettle, chuffling, behind them.

p. 183 He's had very few visitors; I suppose that's the tragedy of teaching school. You remember so many and so few remember you.

p. 194 The fullness [of youth] ends when we give Nature her ransom, when we make children for her. Then she is through with us, and we become, first inside, and then outside, junk. Flower stalks.

p. 243 The houses, many of them no longer lived in by the people whose faces he all knew, are like the houses in a town you see from the train, their brick faces stern in posing the riddle, Why does anyone live here? Why was he set down here; why is this particular ordinary town for him the center and index of a universe that contains great prairies, mountains, deserts, forests, cities, seas? This childish mystery - the mystery of "any place," prelude to the ultimate, "Why am I me?" - reignites panic in his heart.