Alison

“Until my grandfather finishes his dictionary, which probably won’t ever happen, the biggest dictionary in the world will still be the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s enormous. We don’t have one. It’s too expensive. Instead we have a condensed OED. The cover is as navy as a bruise. I looked up the word navy in it and found that this word shares a history with nausea and navel from the Sanskrit na or sna or snu, which means to bathe as in the word snake. Unwound language can look like the white cord of unwound brain. It can be dangerous to unwind some words. Jude wasn’t in the Navy. He was in the Army and army comes from ar—to fit, to join, see art, see inertia, the dictionary says.”
― Samantha Hunt, The Seas

“Oh, it's simple pragmatism, Dad. It's called the real world. If we refused to do business with the morally questionable, the deal volume would drop in half and the good guys like us would end up poor. Then where would we all be?" said Roger. "On a nice dry spit of land know as the moral high ground?" suggested the Major.”
― Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

“My mother is regularly torn between being herself and being my mother.”
― Samantha Hunt, The Seas

“You are mistaken, Ernest,” she said at last. “There is only the passionate spark. Without it, two people living together may be lonelier than if they lived quite alone.” Her voice had a gentle finality, as if he were already putting on his coat and leaving her.”
― Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand