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In retrospect, the railroads’ development looks inevitable, but Richard White – their greatest, contemporary, historian, and, not accidentally, one of the leading authorities on the history of the Midwest and West as well – points out that the massive transcontinentals didn’t actually need to happen when or how they did. America could have waited at least: [ block quote] … The transcontinentals, like those “suppositious villages” that didn’t fail, were a vision willed into reality by speculators, a massive unwieldy idea made profitable by a combination of old- fashioned corruption and a dreamlike conviction of their eventual profitability.

— Midwest Futures by Phil Christman (Page 55 - 56)

What flatness actually means is excess, overwhelm. By not hiding any of itself, a flat place exhausts your seeing. It gifts us more information than we can take in; dazed, bedazzled, we give up on it, and call our failure boredom.

— Midwest Futures by Phil Christman (Page 21)

Four [Marguerite] Young, the Midwest is a primordial ocean, a huge coil of pure possibility, that swallows all forms, all possibilities.

— Midwest Futures by Phil Christman (Page 19)

“Do not talk about severed heads at a wedding”

— The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel (Thomas Cromwell, #3) (Page 23)

A too–strong belief in one’s own normalcy becomes precisely a belief in one’s superiority. Normalness becomes a fetish, a performance, or a product.

— Midwest Futures by Phil Christman (Page 111)