At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger since it is not in man’s power to foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes.

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

We had the habit of luck and power, and couldn’t understand that they were not our right. We saw that the situation was bad, elsewhere, but surely things would work out, because didn’t they always, for us?

Jessie Greengrass, The High House

Denial can be a pathology or a survival mechanism—and sometimes it’s both.

Jane Fonda

People tend to become cynical about even the most appalling crisis if it seems to be dragging on, failing to come to term.

Susan Sontag

She did not believe in burying her head in the sand, but there were times when she longed for a paper that portrayed the world in something other than a state of crisis. She wanted the world to be peaceful, and it was not.

Alexander McCall Smith, The Geometry of Holding Hands

NC passed law against global warming science, therefore it’s not happening. So I’m ignoring Twitter’s 140-character limit, so it’s not happ

Stephen Colbert

The crises are here, and they are speeding along, and they are not particularly interested in whether you, or I, or any of us are clocking their presence. The crises have no ego, no desire for acknowledgment. The world will collapse with or without the agreement of the people inhabiting it. Indeed, the world as we know it has ended several times over, in ways small and large, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.

Hanif Abdurraqib

“We have to do something,” we tell one another, as though reciting the line were enough. “We have to do something,” we tell ourselves, and then wait for instructions that are not on the way. We know that we are choosing our own end; we just can’t believe it.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.

Jane Wagner, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe

Immersing myself in the natural world of my own backyard . . . is the way I cope with whatever I think I cannot bear. I’m not trying to hide from the truth but to balance it, to remind myself that there are other truths too. I need to remember that the earth, fragile as it is, remains heartbreakingly beautiful.

Margaret Renkl

Aren’t we unfortunate babies to be born when the world ended? After that there was no chance for the planet, and no chance for us. Or maybe it was just the end of one civilization, ours, and at some time in the future another will take its place. In that case we are standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something.

Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

The very utterness of the crash and the ruin, the desperation of the case, might be its hope. On ruins one can begin to build. Anyhow, looking out from ruins one clearly sees; there are no obstructing walls.

Rose Macaulay, The Valley Captives

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

To hope is to accept despair as an emotion but not as an analysis. To recognize that what is unlikely is possible, just as what is likely is not inevitable.

Rebecca Solnit

Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis—once that crisis can be recognized and understood.

Norman Cousins

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring