Sublime

The form of the protest—the bizarre blood sculpture, the poems—was itself a protest against passivity, lack of imagination, and normalcy.

The unfortunate girl was found wandering the streets in despair, since the map was inaccurate and the Mayday contacts turned out not to exist.

‘You’re our longest-serving contributor,’ said Carleton, flinching at the bang. ‘Our most admired. Indeed I should say our most popular.’ I’m beginning to speak like him, he thought: Thomas Hart is catching, that’s the trouble. ‘I’ve often heard it said that it’s a consolation – that’s the general feeling, as I said to the board – to wake on Thursd

To know that these people counted for so little that anyone holding a phone could intervene in their lives, as if ordering a meal to be delivered, could type and sign a quick letter authorizing the transfer of any chained person from one Ship to another, just as Marjorie had done.

Varian Fry.

Maxine Tarnow,

In 1944, aged 41, Mafalda was one of the millions killed in concentration camps.

Protective colouration, she called her outfits. She looked like a dependable mother from a respectable neighbourhood such as ours. As she worked at the kitchen counter, she might have been demonstrating a jiffy recipe in Good Housekeeping magazine—something with tomato aspic, this being the mid-1950s, when tomato aspic was a food group.

Mrs. Thorpe was a widow, and not a very rich one; she was a good-humoured, well-meaning woman, and a very indulgent mother. Her eldest daughter had great personal beauty, and the younger ones, by pretending to be as handsome as their sister, imitating her air, and dressing in the same style, did very well.