Betsy > Betsy's Quotes

“Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience.”
― Victoria Holt

“The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Bell at Sealey Head

“The sun doesn't just hang on one family's tree”
― Anchee Min, Empress Orchid

“I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“People say that certain sounds can melt a heart of stone. If there is anyone who has that sort of a heart―which I doubt (as far as I am aware hearts are made of fibrous materials, fluid sacs and pumping mechanisms)―if anyone does have a heart composed of granite or flint and therefore not at all prone to melting but just conceivably meltable when exposed to very beautiful sounds, then the sounds made by my cherrywood harp, I am confident, would do it. However, I had a feeling the heart of Ellie the Exmoor Housewife was completely lacking in stony components. I had a feeling it was made of much softer stuff.”
― Hazel Prior, Ellie and the Harpmaker

“What do we say in this house? Boys can do girl things and girls can do boy things. That’s not even a Guncle Rule, there shouldn’t even be boy things and girl things to begin with. People should just do what they want.”
― Steven Rowley, The Guncle

“Guncle Rule number seven: In this house we wear what we want, it doesn’t matter if it’s for boys or girls. Anything goes, anything you want, so long as it doesn’t have mean words printed on it and it’s not making fun of anyone else. We don’t worry about what others think. Deal?”
― Steven Rowley, The Guncle

“In the United States, fascism is on the rise. Libraries are under attack. Some pundits ask why universities bother with departments that don’t just teach students to write computer code. Violent bigotry is fashionable again, and for many people, the appeal of politics is the opportunity to impose cruelty on others. The admonition to remember has never seemed so important.”
― Elyse Graham, Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II

“The historical record often neglects certain kinds of stories. For example, in the Library of Congress, OSS veterans helped catalogue the OSS records; this was a good service to the country, but they often catalogued the names of men and not the names of women. In memoirs that men wrote about the war years, the names of women are, likewise, often absent – they’re “a shapely analyst.” Say or “a woman from Harvard.” I’m grateful to have a way to fill in the stories of figures who, despite their importance, don’t receive their due space in the archives.”
― Elyse Graham, Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II

“Women, as you must know, have a far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men. Men usually want a mate with them.”63”
― Elyse Graham, Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II