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So she was what Hester called a 911 Christian: in the event of an emergency, call the Lord. Unlike all those who called on Jesus daily, rain or shine, to discuss their day and feel the love. Once upon a time she’d had her mother for that. Jesus was a more reliable backer, evidently, less likely to drink himself unconscious or get liver cancer. No wonder people chose Him as their number-one friend. But if the chemistry wasn’t there, what could you do? Dellarobia scrutinized life too hard, she knew that. For a year she’d gone with Cub to Wednesday Bible group and loved the sense of being back in school, but her many questions did not make her the teacher’s pet. Right out of the gate, in Genesis, she identified two completely different versions of how it all got started. The verses could be a listen-and-feel kind of thing, like music, she’d suggested, not like the instruction booklet that comes with a darn appliance. A standpoint that won no favors with the permanent discussion leader, Blanchie Bise, cheerleader for taking the Word on faith. For crap’s sake, the first rule of believable was to get your story straight. Hester let Dellarobia stop coming to Wednesday Bible.

— Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture. Or so it seemed for now, to a woman with flame-colored hair who marched uphill to meet her demise

— Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver (Page 1)

For byfolk var fjorden ein illusjon, eit rekreasjonsområde, ein stad som knapt eksisterte før dei sette seg i bilen fredag ettermiddag, og som dei forlét igjen søndag kveld for å returnere til liv der dei resten av veka skrytte av roa og det enkle livet. Også Aud Haver skrytte, for ein fabelaktig natur dette var. Nils forklarte at dei ikkje sa natur her, dei sa skog og stein og fjell og elv og fjord, det var ting ein kunne peike på og vere nær og bry seg om, det var ikkje natur.

— Den dagen Nils Vik døde by Frode Grytten (Page 123)

In the quarter century since the Oslo agreements, the situation in Palestine and Israel has often been falsely described as a clash between two near-equals, between the state of Israel and the quasi-state of the Palestinian Authority. This depiction masks the unequal, unchanged colonial reality. The PA has no sovereignty, no jurisdiction, and no authority except that allowed it by Israel, which even controls a major part of its revenues in the form of customs duties and some taxes. Its primary function, to which much of its budget is devoted, is security, but not for its people: it is mandated by US and Israeli dictates to provide security for Israel’s settlers and occupation forces against the resistance, violent and otherwise, of other Palestinians. Since 1967, there has been one state authority in all of the territory of Mandatory Palestine: that of Israel. The creation of the PA did nothing to change that reality, rearranging the deckchairs on the Palestinian Titanic, while providing Israeli colonization and occupation with an indispensable Palestinian shield. Facing the colossus that is the Israeli state is a colonized people denied equal rights and the ability to exercise their right of national self-determination, a continuous condition since the idea of self-determination took hold globally after World War I.

— The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi