Michelle Smith

“A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.”
― Philippe Ariès

“Why was it, she wondered, that men always seemed to want so much advice? They never took it unless it was a confirmation of their own desires, but they liked to have it. They liked to march fortified by feminine approval as well as by masculine initiative. Would women, she mused while in the kitchen, opening paper bags, laying out plates and knives and spoons on trays, cutting tomatoes, grating cheese, and scraping the remnants of ham from a knuckle bone, would women have done better through life if they had more consistently demanded from men the toll of daily council? If, instead of merely doing things, they had waylaid friends, lovers, husbands, and brothers, and set before them this plan and the other, crying dramatically, “This step will make or mar me!” Or, “If I go wrong here, I’m done!” Or, “But in spite of God and the devil, I’ll do it yet,” Women, reflected Jean, too often knew that, as likely as not, they would never be done till dead.”
― Winifred Holtby, Mandoa, Mandoa!: A Comedy of Irrelevance

“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”
― C.S. Lewis

“The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.”
― C.S. Lewis