To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2)

by Connie Willis

Infatuation was a lot like time-lag, an imbalance of chemicals, cured by a good night’s sleep.

Nothing in all those “O swan” poems had ever mentioned that they hissed. Or resented being mistaken for felines. Or bit.

“If King Harold had had swans on his side, England would still be Saxon.”

If the uranium emitted an electron, it would trigger the hammer which would break the bottle. That would release the gas that would kill the cat that lived in the box that Schrödinger built.

One has not lived until one has carried a sixty-pound dog down a sweeping flight of stairs at half-past V in the morning.

“All the diary entries and dismissals in the world cannot change the truth. Galileo recanted under threat of torture, but that did not make the sun revolve round the earth. If you dismiss me, the vase will still be vulgar, I will still be right, and your taste will still be plebeian, no matter what you write in your diary.”

Why can’t people say who and what they are talking about so the eavesdropper has a chance? I thought. The patient. Infection. Be more specific.

Attics in books and vids are always picturesque places, with a bicycle, several large plumed hats, an antique rocking horse, and, of course, a steamer trunk for storing the missing will or the dead body in.