My mother was below the salt...

My mother was a Methodist, but my father was Anglican: thus my mother was below my father’s level socially, as such things were accounted then. (If she’d lived, my Grandmother Adelia would never have allowed the marriage, or so I decided later. My mother would have been too far down the ladder for her – also too prudish, too earnest, too provincial. Adelia would have dragged my father off to Montreal – hooked him up to a debutante, at the very least. Someone with better clothes.)

Margaret Atwood

The Blind Assassin (2000)

We found our refuge in science...

I belonged to a small minority of boys who were lacking in physical strength and athletic prowess. ... We found our refuge in science. ... We learned that science is a revenge of victims against oppressors, that science is a territory of freedom and friendship in the midst of tyranny and hatred.

Freeman Dyson

"To Teach or Not to Teach" (1992)

From Eros to Gaia Vol. 5

Muffled voices

Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house. His writing is that of someone whose whole life was spent in apartments, with lifts, stairwells, muffled voices behind closed doors, and sounds through walls. Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.

Alan Bennett
Writing Home (1994)

Source: https://quotepark.com/quotes/1730205-alan-bennett-kafka-could-never-have-written-as-he-did-had-he-li/

Comics are real

Comics are often seen as a gateway to “real reading” by those who don’t understand the difference between reading pictures and just looking at them; comics are no more words with pictures than singing is just words with yelling.

-- Chris Ware

"American Vernacular: Chicago and the Birth of the Comic"

The New Yorker (August 28, 2021)

A. Lincoln, dancing

Captivated by [Mary Todd’s] lively manner, intelligent face, clear blue eyes, and dimpled smile, Lincoln reportedly said, “I want to dance with you in the worst way." And, Mary laughingly told her cousin later..., "he certainly did.”

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Team Of Rivals (2005)

Russell's conjugation

I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool.

I am righteously indignant, you are annoyed, he is making a fuss over nothing.

I have reconsidered the matter, you have changed your mind, he has gone back on his word.

-- Bertrand Russell
BBC Radio programme The Brains Trust (1948)

Adam Gopnik on Lewis Carroll

It sometimes seems as if all literary-minded women see themselves, sooner or later, as Alice, just as literary-minded men have always seen themselves as Hamlet. (Men choose Hamlet because every man sees himself as a disinherited monarch; women choose Alice because every woman sees herself as the only reasonable creature among crazy people who think that they are disinherited monarchs.)

-- Adam Gopnik

"Wonderland"

from The New Yorker (Oct. 2, 1995)

A toast!

     "Charley, what're all these clippings?
     "Friend of mine, Ma!" Bruno shouted through the bathroom door. He turned the water on harder, leaned on the basin, and concentrated on the bright nickel-plated drainstop. After a moment, he reached for the Scotch bottle he kept under towels in the clothes hamper. He felt less shaky with the glass of Scotch and water in his hand, and spent a few seconds inspecting the silver braid on the sleeve of his new smoking jacket. He liked the jacket so much, he wore it as a bathrobe also. In the mirror, the oval lapels framed the portrait of a young man of leisure, of reckless and mysterious adventure, a young man of humor and depth, power and gentleness (witness the glass held delicately between thumb and forefinger with the air of an imperial toast)--a young man with two lives. He drank to himself.

--Patricia Highsmith
Strangers On a Train (1950)

That's why

"Poor problem-solving skills. Definition of a murderer right there. Some guy wants a divorce, but doesn't want to lose half of his assets, so he kills his wife instead. Did he have to kill her? Were there other options that might have ended his marriage while preserving his bank account? Of course. But murderers don't see other options. That's why they're murderers."

-- Lisa Gardner

Live To Tell (2010)

Black and white movies

 His phone rang. The ring on Bernie's cell phone sounded like those old phones in black-and-white movies we often watched. I liked watching them because black and white was so easy for me to see; as for why Bernie liked them, I wasn't sure, just knew that if it came to a choice between black and white and color, he always chose black and white.

-- Spencer Quinn
Dog On It (2009)

Believing in the system

Baer embodied the knowledge and technique of industry; Kroner personified the faith, the near-holiness, the spirit of the complicated venture. Kroner, in fact, had a poor record as an engineer and had surprised Paul from time to time with his ignorance or misunderstanding of technical matters; but he had the priceless quality of believing in the system, and of making others believe in it, too, and do as they were told.

-- Kurt Vonnegut
Player Piano (1952)