The Bookbinder Quotes
"Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, but then begins a journey in my head."
"You don’t have to be flesh and blood to be sisterly, you just have to want good for each other."
"Let’s not forget our sisters who work for their living, who own no property, who have no means for education."
"Women and weaklings are the only folks who receive sympathy for the ailments lumped under the label 'nerves'."
"Strength and flexibility. A book needs both."
"I’m selfish, you see. Your ma knew it, my brother knows it, all my friends know it. Deep down, you know it."
"I don’t want to explain Helen to anyone, Peg. Not even Esme."
"I thought of all the paper on Calliope and felt ill. I wouldn’t be able to make it work."
"The truth is, most of us have nothing better to do."
"That’s what I said, but Miss Bruce insisted."
"I’ve been accidentally throwing them across her path since the day we met, forcing her to retreat."
"The Mayor of Oxford had declared 7 November to be Belgian Day."
"I tried to think of something else to say but the only French I could recall at that moment was où est la gare; où est la plage; où est l’hôpital."
"She’s attached herself to Maude like a stray dog to the butcher’s boy."
"I might have turned and gone home, too intimidated to walk past the stone columns and through the heavy ornate doors."
"I stood on the footpath, watching the heavy doors of the Examination Schools open and close."
"We’ve spent our time trying to guess what had become of you."
"Butter makes everything taste good, garlic makes everything taste better."
"You’ll never guess where I am. Étaples. France."
"I folded the words as Rosie might fold beaten egg whites into a pudding."
"It’s not hard to imagine the Press without Mr Hart."
"She’s younger than me but looks older. A widow, I suspect."
"You’ll have to keep it simple, my ear for French is not so good."
"If memory serves, Kipling will be in the second bay of the main room."
"Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation."
"She thinks you’re made of good Somerville material."
"It was all a bit brown and it smelled too much like liver."
"If you shrink yourself to the smallness of your circumstances, you’ll soon disappear."
"We all like being talked about. Miss Bruce thinks you have a scholar’s mind."
"The truth of it echoed in my head. A reprimand."
"You are just one in a long line of good causes."
"The words used to describe us define our value to society and determine our capacity to contribute."
"If your ma was alive, the first thing she’d do is draw you into her beautiful embrace and whisper in your ear that she’d always known you were capable of this."
"I’ve always thought the blossoms of spring as stimulating for the intellect as any text."
"The people who read the books do not always think about the effort that has gone into binding them."
"I’m afraid this copy has been very poorly treated."
"Right now, it’s Love of learning, or overmuch study, with a digression on the misery of scholars, and why the muses are melancholy."
"Interesting is infinitely better than useful."
"Too much learning will make me lonely, send me mad and keep me poor."
"Study is a curse but it might also be a cure, according to Burton."
"Seven causes of melancholy had each been given a rhyme."
"A love of learning and overmuch study was a particular source of woe, Burton said, if it was uncompromising."
"Your brain has gone on strike. It requires a little recreation."
"She would tell you to go punting with your friends."
"God knows studying them always put me in the foulest kind."
"Indicative, imperative, subjunctive and optative."
"No amount of brilliance will get me a degree from this university."
"Should you fail to pass Responsions, then of course answer the call of the War Office."
"It's within the realms of normal. She's been studying too hard."
"I doubt I'll pass Responsions, but even if I do, what's the point?"
"I feel like I've been occupied by an enemy force."
"It was clever of you to report my poor behaviour to Iso in your note."
"I regretted it, Ma. A little more every year."
"You might think you're too good for this place but you're not gone yet."
"To roll bandages and clean bedpans. Essential work, all of it."
"To trade your education, and your potential, for such war work as could be done by anyone."
"It will be hard to justify another year waiting for a place at a university."
"The fact they weren't allowed in was my only consolation."
"The past four years have been an incubation, and we women can only emerge brighter, stronger."
"You shouldn’t have left the scones – they were delicious."
"I did more than dream, if you recall. And after doing more than dream, I failed."
"You’ll be marching into the Sheldonian before you know it, Peg."
"They are the survivors, I thought, of war and influenza. And now they have triumphed over tradition."