Steve

“Life outside the bounds of literature was harsh and abusive, but books offered living thought, and feeling, and learning. It was impossible to bridge these two realms, and he retreated farther and farther into literature. Only the children he taught could make the nauseating reality outside of books bearable.”
― Ludmilla Ulitskaya, The Big Green Tent

“One leaps out of bed, throws up the window; with what a whirr the birds rise! You know that sudden rush of wings, that exclamation, carol, and confusion; the riot and babble of voices; and all the drops are sparkling, trembling, as if the garden were a splintered mosaic, vanishing, twinkling; not yet formed into one whole; and a bird sings close to the window.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“It is important to note that corruption was rife in many departments before Grant took office. In January 1869, the journalist John Russell Young told Washburne that somebody was needed in the Interior Department “who will take the many-headed serpent of robbery and strangle it in its various shapes—Indian Rings, Patent Rings, Stationery Rings and Railroad Rings. This work will, of course, make a tremendous howl among Congress-people.”75”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“You argue like an Elizabethan wit -- two meanings under one word.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night