Leah

“Long before science existed, sharp-eyed men and women told each other stories about how people are, stories that have never lost their power to enchant and instruct. The purpose of using science to investigate human nature is not to replace these stories but to augment and deepen them.”
― Thomas Lewis, A General Theory of Love

“Encountering an early series of consistent instances can implant an erroneous generality in a child's mind. This mental machinery distills and does not evaluate; it cannot detect whether the larger world runs in accordance with the scheme it has drawn forth from the emotional microcosm of a family. Just as grammatical English emerges from our lips automatically, a structured pattern of emotional relatedness emanates from each of us.”
― Thomas Lewis, A General Theory of Love

“Books bend space and time. One reason the owners of those aforesaid little rambling, poky secondhand bookshops always seem slightly unearthly is that many of them really are, having strayed into this world after taking a wrong turning in their own bookshops in worlds where it is considered commendable business practice to wear carpet slippers all the time and open your shop only when you feel like it. You stray into L-space at your peril.

Very senior librarians, however, once they have proved themselves worthy by performing some valiant act of librarianship, are accepted into a secret order and are taught the raw arts of survival beyond the Shelves We Know.”
― Terry Pratchett

“...[Emilio] felt once more the strangely visceral thrill of trying to disprove a hypothesis he suspected was robust.”
― Mary Doria Russell, Children of God