“It is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it’s useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled up bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then next day you probably do much the same again - if to do that is human if that’s what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time.”
- Ursula K Le Guin, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.
Category: words
“I find I am at ease with other imagined minds — bringing to life, restoring in some sense to…”
“I find I am at ease with other imagined minds — bringing to life, restoring in some sense to vitality, the whole varnished men of other times, […] the incessant weaving labour of the marvellous brain inside the skull — making its patterns, its most particular sense of what it sees and learns and believes. It seems important that these other lives of mine should span many centuries and as many places as my limited imagination can touch.”
- A. S. Byatt, Possession.
- A. S. Byatt, Possession.
“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that…”
“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”
- Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.
- Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.
“There is a view that love, because it begins so spontaneously, is also simple. Yet if love engages…”
“There is a view that love, because it begins so spontaneously, is also simple. Yet if love engages our whole being and affects our whole world, how can it be simple? The days of simple are done — if they ever existed. Love is not a pristine planet before contaminants and pollutants, before the arrival of Man. Love is a disturbance among the disturbed.”
- Jeanette Winterson, Frankissstein: A Love Story.
- Jeanette Winterson, Frankissstein: A Love Story.
“It matters what name we choose, what name we make.”
“It matters what name we choose, what name we make.”
- Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall.
- Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall.
“The future cannot blame the present, just as the present cannot blame the past. The hope is always…”
“The future cannot blame the present, just as the present cannot blame the past. The hope is always here, always alive, but only your fierce caring can fan it into a fire to warm the world.”
- Susan Cooper, Silver on the Tree.
- Susan Cooper, Silver on the Tree.
“The future cannot blame the present, just as the present cannot blame the past. The hope is always…”
“The future cannot blame the present, just as the present cannot blame the past. The hope is always here, always alive, but only your fierce caring can fan it into a fire to warm the world.”
- Susan Cooper, Silver on the Tree.
- Susan Cooper, Silver on the Tree.
“The occupants of these graves had died for something. In the sunset glow, in the rising of the moon,…”
“The occupants of these graves had died for something. In the sunset glow, in the rising of the moon, in the taste of the cigar, in the warmth that comes from sheer exhaustion, Vimes saw it. History finds a way.”
- Terry Pratchett, Night Watch.
- Terry Pratchett, Night Watch.
“I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too…”
“I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.”
- Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
- Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
“Beekeepers are careful to tell their bees everything important that concerns the family and…”
“Beekeepers are careful to tell their bees everything important that concerns the family and household – births, marriages, deaths, a new set of curtains, and suchlike. But that’s not superstition, just the practical observation that if you don’t tell them, they will fly indoors to find out for themselves.”
- Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson, The Folklore of Discworld.
- Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson, The Folklore of Discworld.