It is my belief that everything you need to know about the world can be learned in a church choir.

Barbie's one of those fads whose popularity makes you lose all faith in the human race.

Why do only the awful things become fads? I thought. Eye-rolling and Barbie and bread pudding. Why never chocolate cheesecake or thinking for yourself?

Everyone else had the look of tired patience people always got when listening to a sermon, no matter what the century.

I was never going to get any sleep. I was going to have Alice in Wonderland conversation after Alice in Wonderland conversation until I died of exhaustion. Here, in the restful, idyllic Victorian era.

Perhaps that's how I should think of them, Polly thought, the troupe and Miss Snelgrove and Trot. And Sir Godfrey. Not as lost to her, but as removed to this moment in time for safekeeping.

One has not lived until one has carried a sixty-pound dog down a sweeping flight of stairs at half-past V in the morning.