Emmeline didn't call me anything. She didn't need, for I was always there. You only need names for the absent.

I shall start at the beginning. Though of coarse, the beginning is never where you think it is.

Though my appetite for food grew frail, my hunger for books was constant.

One needs no particular talent to be polite. On the contrary, being nice is what's left when you've failed at everything else.

You are suffering from an ailment that affects ladies of romantic imaginations. Symptoms include fainting, weariness, loss of appetite, low spirits. While on one level the crisis can be ascribed to wandering about in freezing rain without the benefit of adequate waterproofing, the deeper cause is more likely to be found in some emotional trauma. However, unlike the heroines of your favorite novels, your constitution has not been weakened by the privations of life in earlier, harsher centuries. No tuberculosis, no childhood polio, no unhygienic living conditions. You'll survive.' " pg. 303

What better place to kill time than a library?

I am human. Like all humans, I do not remember my birth. By the time we wake up to ourselves, we are little children, and our advent is something that happened an eternity ago, at the beginning of time. We live like latecomers to the theater; we must catch up as best we can, divining the begging from the shape of later events. - Vida Winter