Views from Medina Road

From a couple books I've been re/reading, passages that struck me.

Joan Didion on Doris Lessing:

Imagine an interplanetary conference, convened on Venus to discuss once again the problem of the self-destructive planet Earth. (The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers.)

From one of Time Magazine's 100 all-time novels (written in English and published since 1923):

On the trip back to the Western Hemisphere he had decided which of their ads he liked the most. "You know that recent Supreme Court ruling where a husband can legally murder his wife if he can prove she wouldn't under any circumstances give him a divorce?"