Quote of the Hour: Facts and Figures

I did a "Quote of the Hour" day at the end of last year, to run through the extra quotes that had been cluttering up the blog drafts. Well, it's happening again, so this may be a twice-yearly thing. Since we're at the halfway point of 2023, have a bunch of quotes, some from things I read last year and some from this. Once again, they're roughly in the order I read these books.

These are the details - the models and colors of armored vehicles, the makes and calibers of weapons, the particular methods of dismemberment and decapitation used in particular instances - on which the visitor to Salvador learns immediately to concentrate, to the exclusion of past or future concerns, as in a prolonged amnesiac fugue.

 - Joan Didion, Salvador, p.348 in We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live