Rachel Mckellar

“The young were always theoretical; only the middle-aged could realize the deadliness of principles. To subdue one’s self to one’s own ends might be dangerous, but to subdue one’s self to other people’s ends was dust and ashes. Yet there were those, still more unhappy, who envied even the ashy saltiness of those dead sea apples.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“My parents weren't interested in recommending books to me. Reading was an act of revolution, therefore I was expected to find my own way. Neither of them read to become well-rounded or for just the luxury of escape. Instead books gave them each a personal vision that became their road out of the limited circumstances that they had been born into.”
― Ianthe Brautigan, You Can't Catch Death: A Daughter's Memoir

“If he was silent I could be silent too. Indeed, I could very well do with a little rest in this subdued, frightened-to-death rocking chair, before I drove to wherever the beast's lair was - and then pulled the pistol's foreskin back, and then enjoyed the orgasm of the crushed trigger.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Librarianship was not just a job for her, but her tikkun olam, the Hebrew phrase for "repairing the world.”
― Kate Stewart, A Well-Read Woman: The Life, Loves, and Legacy of Ruth Rappaport