“Nature had been busy designing him, as she had been busy with all normal men, for the purpose of loving. She had spent ten thousand centuries — ay, a hundred thousand and a million centuries — upon the task, and he was the best she could do.”

“Nature had been busy designing him, as she had been busy with all normal men, for the purpose of loving. She had spent ten thousand centuries — ay, a hundred thousand and a million centuries — upon the task, and he was the best she could do.”

“[For] decades, researchers have told us that the link between cataclysm and social disintegration is a myth perpetuated by movies, fiction, and misguided journalism. In fact, in case after case, the opposite occurs: In the earthquake and fire of 1906, Jack London observed: "never, in all San Francisco's history, were her people so kind and courteous as on this night of terror." "We did not panic. We coped," a British psychiatrist recalled after the July 7, 2005, London subway bombings. We often assume that such humanity among survivors, what author Rebecca Solnit has called "a paradise built in hell," is an exception after catastrophes, specific to a particular culture or place. In fact, it is the rule.”