Nihilistic Librarian

“Just as it did in the nineteenth century, the notion that the victims were 'only prostitutes' seeks to perpetuate the belief that there are good women and bad women; madonnas and whores. It suggests that there is an acceptable standard of female behaviour and those that deviate from it are fit to be punished. Equally, it assists in reasserting the double standard , exonerating men from wrongs committed against such women. These attitudes may not feel as prevalent as they were in 1888, but they persist - not proffered in general conversation... but, rather integrated subtly into the fabric of our social norms.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“This is not to say that torture mechanically reshapes all individuals to make them capable of greater cruelty. But scholars of psychopathology, like the great Simon Baron-Cohen, have found strong links that show enduring trauma can cause a person to lose empathy. To lose empathy is to view other human beings as objects, which is necessary to the infliction of cruelty and violence upon them. Baron-Cohen’s research shows that torturing a person, rendering him an object, a vessel out of which intelligence can be extracted, radically dulls that person’s ability to focus on another person’s interests at the same time as his own.”
― Azadeh Moaveni, Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS

“Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“In 1918 Mao landed a job in a library, the ideal location for a cash strapped nascent megalomaniac in need of easy access to inspirational bad ideas.”
― Daniel Kalder, The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy