If you’ve never read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter, I think it would make good quarantine reading. They run out of fuel, they nearly run out of food (Almanzo saves them!), they can’t leave the house, there’s nothing to do, and near the end of the book everyone is so broken down they’re ready to give up.
But then! Good old Pa jumps up and shakes his fist at the blizzard howling outside the tar paper shack:
“It can’t beat us!” Pa said.
“Can’t it, Pa?” Laura asked stupidly.
“No,” said Pa. “It’s got to quit sometime and we don’t. It can’t lick us. We won’t give up.”
Then Laura felt a warmth inside her. It was very small but it was strong. It was steady, like a tiny light in the dark, and it burned very low but no winds could make it flicker because it would not give up.
It’s got to quit sometime and we don’t. That’s right, friends.