Just a few lines from my recent reading.

“When the sweat comes back this summer, 1528, people say, as they did last year, that you won’t get it if you don’t think about it. But how can you not?” Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel

“The saying that we are members one of another is not a mere pious formula to be repeated in church without any meaning: it is a literal truth, for though the rich end of the town can avoid living with the poor end, it cannot avoid dying with it when the plague comes.” The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, George Bernard Shaw

“I had two important things before me: the one was the carrying on my business and shop, which was considerable, and in which was embarked all my effects in the world; and the other was the preservation of my life in so dismal a calamity as I saw apparently was coming upon the whole city, and which, however great it was, my fears perhaps, as well as other people’s, represented to be much greater than it could be.” A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion