opening the book, i inhaled. the smell of old books, so sharp, so dry you can taste it.

Our clients' faces, with the customary outward paleness and inner glow of the book lover.

She was a do-gooder, which means that all the ill she did, she did without realizing it.

I don't pretend reality is the same for everyone.

One gets so used to one's own horrors, one forgets how they must seem to other people.

The doctor's wife wasn't a bad woman. She was sufficiently convinced of her own importance to believe that God actually did watch everything she did and listen to everything she said, and she was too taken up with rooting out the pride she was prone to feeling in her own holiness to notice any other failings she might have had. She was a do-gooder, which means that all the ill she did, she did without realizing it.

Once upon a time there was a fairy godmother, but the rest of the time there was none. This story is about one of those other times.