Ioana

“The subtext of all table manners is the fear that the man next to you may pull his knife on you.”
― Bee Wilson, Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat

“every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play

“I’ll be honest, right now you could probably talk me into anything. Chains or leather or ducks.”
“Ducks?”
“Whatever.”
Pen pressed against him. “What would I use a duck for?”
“Don’t ask me. I said you could talk me into it, not that it was my idea.”
“I’m not doing anything with a duck.”
“Fine. Forget the duck.”
― K.J. Charles, An Unsuitable Heir