Wherever You Go...

A momentous but until then overlooked fact was making itself apparent: I had inadvertently brought myself with me to the island.

-Alain De Botton, The Art of Travel, 19.

So Much for Feng Shui

We are sad at home and blame the weather and the ugliness of the buildings, but on the tropical island we learn (after an argument in a raffia bungalow under an azure sky) that the state of the skies and the appearance of our dwellings can never on their own either underwrite our joy or condemn us to misery.

-Alain De Botton, The Art of Travel, 25.

Telling Secrets

Revealing a secret is a bit like releasing air from a balloon: the secret spirals around and makes a fun noise—and if you aim right, it might even hit somebody in the nose—but afterward it always falls to the ground, and everyone is left with that sad, after-the-balloon feeling of loss and abandonment.

-Pseudonymous Bosch, You Have to Stop This, 12.

A Woman of Virtue

Good old Sybil, he told himself...Her female forbears had valiantly backed up their husbands as distant embassies were besieged, had given birth on a camel back or in the shade of a stricken elephant, had handed around little gold-wrapped chocolates while trolls were trying to break into the compound, or had merely stayed at home and nursed such bits of husbands and sons that made it back from endless wars. The result was a species of woman, who, when duty called, turned into solid steel.

-Terry Pratchett, Thud, 230.