Sula

“Wonderland has no obvious formal structure; its incidents follow each other quite casually, like a dream sequence. Looking-Glass is based on the very tight pattern of a game of chess.”
― John Rowe Townsend, Written for Children: An Outline of English-Language Children's Literature

“Recent memory replays like a film. For instance, if I think of our Christmas party last year, I see movement and colour and hair as people mill about, hands raised in greeting, a head thrown back in laughter. There are babies and doting women on the kitchen floor, bent backs converging on the bread and cheese like grackles at the bird feeder, the swirl of a skirt as the piano starts and someone dances, the young girls of my family moving through the crowd with their bright beautiful faces among the middle-aged. Far off memory comes more in stills than moving pictures. Of a whole chunk of your life, you may be left with a few stock shots, motion arrested to capture the essence of a span of time.”
― Monica Dickens, An Open Book

“For recreation do something entirely useless, child," he had often said to her. "Man's interest in the unnecessary is a measure of his civilization.”
― Elizabeth Coatsworth, Here I Stay

“The sunlight poured through and sent shadows and tracery upon the white walls, so that the dreamer could lie and watch a pageant of intricate weaving light, a maze of patterned shades, a quivering picture of ever-changing design. The girl put a bowl of water on the deep sill, to catch the sunbeams and flash them in facets over the white ceiling. Dreaming, she sat watching it, fascinated by the curves and cusps of cutting light beams, the blades of fine gold. In autumn when the leaves were thinning, the pale drifts floated into the room and lay on the water.”
― Alison Uttley, When All is Done