Arriving late was a way of saying that your own time was more valuable than the time of the person who waited for you.

When I run the world, librarians will be exempt from tragedy. Even their smaller sorrows will last only for as long as you can take out a book.

Just ask yourself, if we weren't taught to be women, what would we be? (Ask yourself this question even if you're a man, and don't cheat by changing the words.)

Lots of people go mad in January. Not as many as in May, of course. Nor June. But January is your third most common month for madness.

It was the marriage that was important; Jane Austen rarely even bothered to write about the wedding.

No Utopia is Utopia for everyone

The happening and telling are very different things. This doesn’t mean that the story isn’t true, only that I honestly don’t know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how to tell it. Language does this to our memories, simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An off-told story is like a photograph in a family album. Eventually it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.