Maggie Rotter

“Do you know what time is?” His voice is so soft, I think I’m making it up. “Time is our way of keeping everything from happening at once.” I reply as he taught me, long ago, the year my voice broke. “You know what time is? Time is just one damn thing after another.”
― Richard Powers, The Time of Our Singing

“They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.”
― Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

“I long ago became convinced that the most reliable source for arcane and obscure and seemingly unobtainable information does not lie with the government or law enforcement agencies. Apparently neither the CIA nor the military intelligence apparatus inside the Pentagon had even a slight inkling of the Soviet Union's impending collapse, right up to the moment the Kremlin's leaders were trying to cut deals for their memoirs with New York publishers. Or, if a person really wishes a lesson in the subjective nature of official information, he can always call the IRS and ask for help with his tax forms, then call back a half hour later and ask the same questions to a different representative. So where do you go to find a researcher who is intelligent, imaginative, skilled in the use of computers, devoted to discovering the truth, and knowledgeable about science, technology, history, and literature, and who usually works for dirt and gets credit for nothing? After lunch I drove to the city library on Main and asked the reference librarian to find what she could on Junior Crudup.”
― James Lee Burke, Last Car to Elysian Fields