“
Cats, as you know, are quite impervious to threats.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
The reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
One has not lived until one has carried a sixty-pound dog down a sweeping flight of stairs at half-past V in the morning.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
I wanted to come, and if I hadn’t, they would have been all alone, and nobody would have ever known how frightened and brave and irreplaceable they were.
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
And kissed her for a hundred and sixty-nine years.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
People will buy anything at jumble sales,' I said. 'At the Evacuated Children Charity Fair a woman bought a tree branch that had fallen on the table.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
No," I said finally.
"Slowness in Answering," she said into the handheld. "When's the last time you slept?"
"1940" I said promptly, which is the problem with Quickness in Answering.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
Come here, cat. You wouldn’t want to destroy the space-time continuum, would you? Meow. Meow.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
Translated ‘Non omnia possumus omnus’ as ‘No possums allowed on the omnibus.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
None of the things one frets about ever happen. Something one's never thought of does.
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
Travel sounds fun until you realize what you really want is to stay at home with a cup of tea and a stack of books by a warm fire.
”
”
R.F. Kuang (Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution)
“
History was indeed controlled by blind forces, as well as character and courage and treachery and love. And accident and random chance. And stray bullets and telegrams and tips. And cats.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
You'd help if you could, wouldn't you, boy?" I said. "It's no wonder they call you man's best friend. Faithful and loyal and true, you share in our sorrows and rejoice with us in our triumphs, the truest friend we ever have known, a better friend than we deserve. You have thrown in your lot with us, through thick and thin, on battlefield and hearthrug, refusing to leave your master even when death and destruction lie all around. Ah, noble dog, you are the furry mirror in which we see our better selves reflected, man as he could be, unstained by war or ambition, unspoilt by-
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
Nothing in all those "O swan" poems had ever mentioned that they hissed. Or resented being mistaken for felines. Or bit.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
If King Harold had had swans on his side, England would still be Saxon.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
A Grand Design we couldn't see because we were part of it. A Grand Design we only got occasional, fleeting glimpses of. A Grand Design involving the entire course of history and all of time and space that, for some unfathomable reason, chose to work out its designs with cats and croquet mallets and penwipers, to say nothing of the dog. And a hideous piece of Victorian artwork. And us.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
I was never going to get any sleep. I was going to have Alice in Wonderland conversation after Alice in Wonderland conversation until I died of exhaustion. Here, in the restful, idyllic Victorian era.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
It is the end of the world. Surely you could be allowed a few carnal thoughts.
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
That’s the problem with models—they only include the details people think are relevant,
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
Poor thing, consigned to a life of frivolousness and wretched things for breakfast. Not allowed to go to school or do anything worthwhile, and eel pie besides.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
Finch picked up one of the ancient fax-mags and brought it over to me.
"I don't need anything to read," I said. "I'll just sit here and eavesdrop along with you."
"I thought you might sit on the mag," he said. "It's extremely difficult to get soot out of chintz.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
Kivrin reached out for Dunworthy's hand and clasped it tightly in her own. "I knew you'd come," she said, and the net opened.
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
There is nothing more helpful than shouted instructions, particularly incomprehensible ones. I
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
Explain! Perhaps you’d like to explain it to me, too. I’m not used to having my civil liberties taken away like this. In America, nobody would dream of telling you where you can or can’t go.” And over thirty million Americans died during the Pandemic as a result of that sort of thinking, he thought.
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
One of the first symptoms of time-lag is a tendency to maudlin sentimentality, like an Irishman in his cups or a Victorian poet cold-sober.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
This is the Victorian era," she said. "Women didn't have to make sense.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
This Earle of Oxford, making of his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a Fart, at which he was so abashed and ashamed that he went to Travell, 7 yeares. On his returne the Queen welcomed him home, and sayd, My Lord, I had forgott the Fart.
”
”
John Aubrey (Brief Lives (Penguin Classics))
“
It’s strange. When I couldn’t find the drop and the plague came, you seemed so far away I would not ever be able to find you again. But I know now that you were here all along, and that nothing, not the Black Death nor seven hundred years, nor death nor things to come nor any other creature could ever separate me from your caring and concern. It was with me every minute.
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
It is a temporal universal that people never appreciate their own time, especially transportation. Twentieth-Century contemps complained about cancelled flights and gasoline prices, Eighteenth-Century contemps complained about muddy roads and highwaymen. No doubt Professor Peddick’s Greeks complained about recalcitrant horses and chariot wheels falling off.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
There was a crack of thunder so loud I was convinced I’d been struck by lightning for lying.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
io sui ici en liu dami amo’ (‘I am here in place of a friend love’)
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
I sat there watching him examine the fish and marvelling at what we’d caught. A genuine eccentric Oxford don. They’re an extinct species, too...
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
Cyril had staked out his claim and refused to move. "Move over!" I said, freeing one hand from holding the cat to push. "Dogs are supposed to sleep at the foot of the bed." Cyril had never heard of this rule. He jammed his body up against my back and began to snore. I tugged at the rugs, trying to get enough to cover me, and turned on my side, the cat cradled in my arms. Princess Arjumand paid no attention to the regulations of animals on the bed either. She promptly wriggled free and walked round the bed, treading on Cyril, who responded with a faint "oof," and kneading her claws in my leg. Cyril shoved and shoved again until he had the entire bed and all the covers, and Princess Arjumand draped herself across my neck with her full weight on my Adam's apple. Cyril shoved some more. An hour into this little drama it began to rain in earnest, and everyone moved in under the covers and began jockeying for position again.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
None of the things one frets about ever happen. Something one’s never thought of does.
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
Because around a crisis point, even the tiniest action can assume importance all out of proportion to its size. Consequences multiply and cascade, and anything—a missed telephone call, a match struck during a blackout, a dropped piece of paper, a single moment—can have empire-tottering effects. The Archduke Ferdinand’s chauffeur makes a wrong turn onto Franz-Josef Street and starts a world war. Abraham Lincoln’s bodyguard steps outside for a smoke and destroys a peace. Hitler leaves orders not to be disturbed because he has a migraine and finds out about the D-Day invasion eighteen hours too late. A lieutenant fails to mark a telegram “urgent” and Admiral Kimmel isn’t warned of the impending Japanese attack. “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
That’s the thing about poetry, it’s scarcely ever accurate. Take the Lady of Shalott. ‘She loosed the chain and down she lay; The broad stream bore her far away.’ She lies down in the boat and goes floating down to Camelot, which couldn’t possibly happen. I mean, one can’t steer lying down, can one? She’d have ended up stuck in the reeds a quarter of a mile out. I mean, Cyril and I always have trouble keeping the boat headed in a straight line, and we’re not lying down in the bottom of the boat where one can’t see anything, are we?
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
The trouble is that people hate coaches, and for good reason. Coach travel is a dismal and humiliating experience. When I take the bus, as I sometimes must, from Oxford to Cambridge, I arrive feeling almost suicidal.
”
”
George Monbiot (Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning)
“
Kneeling on St. Mary’s stone floor she had envisioned the candles and the cold, but not Lady Imeyne, waiting for Roche to make a mistake in the mass, not Eliwys or Gawyn or Rosemund. Not Father Roche, with his cutthroat’s face and worn-out hose.
She could never in a hundred years, in seven hundred and thirty-four years, have imagined Agnes, with her puppy and her naughty tantrums, and her infected knee. I’m glad I came, she thought. In spite of everything.
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
Terence's idea of roughing it consisted of pork pie, veal pie, cold roast beef, a ham, pickles, pickled eggs, pickled beets, cheese, bread and butter, ginger beer and a bottle of port. It was possibly the best meal I had ever had in my life.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
No," she said. "No. It's only a bad time. A terrible time, but not everyone will die. And there will be wonderful times after this. The Renaissance and class reforms and music. Wonderful times. There will be new medicines, and people won't have to die from this or smallpox or pneumonia. And everyone will have enough to eat, and their houses will be warm even in the winter." She thought of Oxford, decorated for Christmas, the streets and shops lit. "There will be lights everywhere, and bells that you don't have to ring.
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
We weren’t even a halfway decent detectin’ team. We hadn’t solved the case. The case had been solved in spite of us. Worse, we had been such an impediment, we’d had to be packed off out of the way before the course of history could correct itself. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but an elopement.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
How much of an effect on history can an animal have? A big one. Look at Alexander the Great’s horse Bucephalus, and “the little gentleman in the black fur coat” who’d killed King William the Third when his horse stepped in the mole’s front door. And Richard the Third standing on the field at Bosworth and shouting, “My kingdom for a horse!
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
So we can think of etymology as an exercise in tracing how far a word has strayed from its roots. For they travel marvellous distances, both literally and metaphorically.
”
”
R.F. Kuang (Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution)
“
She was afraid she’d have no hope at all of recognizing the drop without the wagon and boxes there. She would have to get Gawyn to show it to her,
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
face Lady Schrapnell. And I promised I’d help
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
And Four, that the reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
One has not lived until one has carried a sixty-pound dog down a sweeping flight of stairs at half-past V in the morning
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
I assumed that Dawson was his valet. Then again, it might be his pet raccoon.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
a powder for the headache which Mrs. Mering had given all of us, but which she took herself.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
Ah, noble dog, you are the furry mirror in which we see our better selves reflected, man as he could be, unstained by war or ambition, unspoilt by—
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but an elopement.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
Belki bizim zamanımızın sorunu da budur Bay Dunworthy. Kurucuları Maisry, piskoposun elçisi ve Sir Bloet ne de olsa. Roche gibi kalıp yardım etmeye çalışan bütün insanlar vebaya yakalanıp öldüler.
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
Reasons Why I Loved Being With Jen
I love what a good friend you are. You’re really engaged with the lives of the people you love. You organize lovely experiences for them. You make an effort with them, you’re patient with them, even when they’re sidetracked by their children and can’t prioritize you in the way you prioritize them.
You’ve got a generous heart and it extends to people you’ve never even met, whereas I think that everyone is out to get me. I used to say you were naive, but really I was jealous that you always thought the best of people.
You are a bit too anxious about being seen to be a good person and you definitely go a bit overboard with your left-wing politics to prove a point to everyone. But I know you really do care. I know you’d sign petitions and help people in need and volunteer at the homeless shelter at Christmas even if no one knew about it. And that’s more than can be said for a lot of us.
I love how quickly you read books and how absorbed you get in a good story. I love watching you lie on the sofa reading one from cover-to-cover. It’s like I’m in the room with you but you’re in a whole other galaxy.
I love that you’re always trying to improve yourself. Whether it’s running marathons or setting yourself challenges on an app to learn French or the fact you go to therapy every week. You work hard to become a better version of yourself. I think I probably didn’t make my admiration for this known and instead it came off as irritation, which I don’t really feel at all.
I love how dedicated you are to your family, even when they’re annoying you. Your loyalty to them wound me up sometimes, but it’s only because I wish I came from a big family.
I love that you always know what to say in conversation. You ask the right questions and you know exactly when to talk and when to listen. Everyone loves talking to you because you make everyone feel important.
I love your style. I know you think I probably never noticed what you were wearing or how you did your hair, but I loved seeing how you get ready, sitting in front of the full-length mirror in our bedroom while you did your make-up, even though there was a mirror on the dressing table.
I love that you’re mad enough to swim in the English sea in November and that you’d pick up spiders in the bath with your bare hands. You’re brave in a way that I’m not.
I love how free you are. You’re a very free person, and I never gave you the satisfaction of saying it, which I should have done. No one knows it about you because of your boring, high-pressure job and your stuffy upbringing, but I know what an adventurer you are underneath all that.
I love that you got drunk at Jackson’s christening and you always wanted to have one more drink at the pub and you never complained about getting up early to go to work with a hangover. Other than Avi, you are the person I’ve had the most fun with in my life.
And even though I gave you a hard time for always trying to for always trying to impress your dad, I actually found it very adorable because it made me see the child in you and the teenager in you, and if I could time-travel to anywhere in history, I swear, Jen, the only place I’d want to go is to the house where you grew up and hug you and tell you how beautiful and clever and funny you are. That you are spectacular even without all your sports trophies and music certificates and incredible grades and Oxford acceptance.
I’m sorry that I loved you so much more than I liked myself, that must have been a lot to carry. I’m sorry I didn’t take care of you the way you took care of me. And I’m sorry I didn’t take care of myself, either. I need to work on it. I’m pleased that our break-up taught me that. I’m sorry I went so mental.
I love you. I always will. I'm glad we met.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
Perhaps that’s what’s wrong with our time, Mr. Dunworthy, it was founded by Maisry and the bishop’s envoy and Sir Bloet. And all the people who stayed and tried to help, like Roche, caught the plague and died.
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
Screen'd is this nook o'er the high, half-reap'd field,
And here till sundown, Shepherd, will I be.
Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep,
And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see
Pale blue convolvulus in tendrils creep:
And air-swept lindens yield
Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers
Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid,
And bower me from the August sun with shade;
And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers...
”
”
Matthew Arnold
“
I don’t know exactly what life has in store for me, but my travels have helped me formulate a better idea of my immediate next move. Europe is where my heart lies, now; here in Paris, at a gallery or museum, or possibly Rome, where Alexander took me last winter.
”
”
Pippa Croft (Fourth Time Forever (Oxford Blue, #3.5))
“
Historical research is well and fine,’ said Letty. ‘All you have to do is look at artefacts, documents, and the like. But how do you research the history of words? How do you determine how far they’ve travelled?’ Professor Lovell looked very pleased by this question. ‘Reading,’ he said.
”
”
R.F. Kuang (Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution)
“
When I was nineteen—which was, oh, Lord, forty years ago, it doesn’t seem that long—my sister and I traveled all over Egypt,” she said. “It was during the Pandemic. Quarantines were being slapped on all about us, and the Israelis were shooting Americans on sight, but we didn’t care. I don’t think it even occurred to us that we might be in danger, that we might catch it or be mistaken for Americans. We wanted to see the Pyramids.
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
In China our professional artists or craftsman used to carve large pieces of white ivory into models of famous buildings, such as the Peking Palace or the Temple of Heaven, with streets and people to the minutest detail. I have been fortunate enough to see a few of theses, and the snow-covered Oxford High, with its yellow stone, resembled one of these exquisite ivory carvings, yellowed with age. I was happy to have discovered such affinity between Oxford and Ancient China.
”
”
Chiang Yee (The Silent Traveller in Oxford (Lost and Found Series))
“
Whatever the final cost of HS2, all those tens of billions could clearly buy lots of things more generally useful to society than a quicker ride to Birmingham. Then there is all the destruction of the countryside. A high-speed rail line offers nothing in the way of charm. It is a motorway for trains. It would create a permanent very noisy, hyper-visible scar across a great deal of classic British countryside, and disrupt and make miserable the lives of hundreds of thousands of people throughout its years of construction. If the outcome were something truly marvellous, then perhaps that would be a justifiable price to pay, but a fast train to Birmingham is never going to be marvellous. The best it can ever be is a fast train to Birmingham. Remarkably, the new line doesn’t hook up to most of the places people might reasonably want to go to. Passengers from the north who need to get to Heathrow will have to change trains at Old Oak Common, with all their luggage, and travel the last twelve miles on another service. Getting to Gatwick will be even harder. If they want to catch a train to Europe, they will have to get off at Euston station and make their way half a mile along the Euston Road to St Pancras. It has actually been suggested that travelators could be installed for that journey. Can you imagine travelling half a mile on travelators? Somebody find me the person who came up with that notion. I’ll get the horsewhip. Now here’s my idea. Why not keep the journey times the same but make the trains so comfortable and relaxing that people won’t want the trip to end? Instead, they could pass the time staring out the window at all the gleaming hospitals, schools, playing fields and gorgeously maintained countryside that the billions of saved pounds had paid for. Alternatively, you could just put a steam locomotive in front of the train, make all the seats inside wooden and have it run entirely by volunteers. People would come from all over the country to ride on it. In either case, if any money was left over, perhaps a little of it could be used to fit trains with toilets that don’t flush directly on to the tracks, so that when I sit on a platform at a place like Cambridge or Oxford glumly eating a WH Smith sandwich I don’t have to watch blackbirds fighting over tattered fragments of human waste and toilet paper. It is, let’s face it, hard enough to eat a WH Smith sandwich as it is.
”
”
Bill Bryson (The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain)
“
We get the word etymology from the Greek étymon,’ continued Professor Lovell. ‘The true sense of a word, from étumos, the “true or actual”. So we can think of etymology as an exercise in tracing how far a word has strayed from its roots. For they travel marvellous distances, both literally and metaphorically.’ He looked suddenly at Robin. ‘What’s the word for a great storm in Mandarin?’ Robin gave a start. ‘Ah – fēngbào?’* ‘No, give me something bigger.’ ‘Táifēng?’* ‘Good.’ Professor Lovell pointed to Victoire. ‘And what weather patterns are always drifting across the Caribbean?’ ‘Typhoons,’ she said, then blinked. ‘Taifeng? Typhoon? How—’ ‘We start with Greco-Latin,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘Typhon was a monster, one of the sons of Gaia and Tartarus, a devastating creature with a hundred serpentine heads. At some point he became associated with violent winds, because later the Arabs started using tūfān to describe violent, windy storms. From Arabic it hopped over to Portuguese, which was brought to China on explorers’ ships.
”
”
R.F. Kuang (Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution)
“
Delete the italics I am not popular enough. I am not good enough. I am not strong enough. I am not lovable enough. I am not attractive enough. I am not cool enough. I am not hot enough. I am not clever enough. I am not funny enough. I am not educated enough. I am not Oxford enough. I am not literary enough. I am not rich enough. I am not posh enough. I am not young enough. I am not tough enough. I am not well-traveled enough. I am not talented enough. I am not cultured enough. I am not smooth-skinned enough. I am not thin enough. I am not muscular enough. I am not famous enough. I am not interesting enough. I am not worth enough. (I am enough.)
”
”
Matt Haig
“
The papers always referred to the strikers as foreign; as Chinamen, Indians, Arabs, and Africans. (Never mind Professor Craft.) They were never Oxfordians, they were never Englishmen, they were travellers from abroad who had taken advantage of Oxford’s good graces, and who now held the nation hostage. Babel had become synonymous with foreign, and this was very strange, because before this, the Royal Institute of Translation had always been regarded as a national treasure, a quintessentially English institution. But then England, and the English language, had always been more indebted to the poor, the lowly, and the foreign than it cared to admit. The word vernacular came from the Latin verna, meaning ‘house slave’; this emphasized the nativeness, the domesticity of the vernacular language. But the root verna also indicated the lowly origins of the language spoken by the powerful; the terms and phrases invented by slaves, labourers, beggars, and criminals – the vulgar cants, as it were – had infiltrated English until they became proper. And the English vernacular could not properly be called domestic either, because English etymology had roots all over the world. Almanacs and algebra came from Arabic; pyjamas from Sanskrit, ketchup from Chinese, and paddies from Malay. It was only when elite England’s way of life was threatened that the true English, whoever they were, attempted to excise all that had made them.
”
”
R.F. Kuang (Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution)
“
Hannah Winter was sixty all of a sudden, as women of sixty are. Just yesterday - or the day before, at most - she had been a bride of twenty in a wine-coloured silk wedding gown, very stiff and rich. And now here she was, all of a sudden, sixty. (...) This is the way it happened!
She was rushing along Peacock Alley to meet her daughter Marcia. Anyone who knows Chicago knows that smoke-blackened pile, the Congress Hotel; and anyone who knows the Congress Hotel has walked down that glittering white marble crypt called Peacock Alley. It is neither so glittering nor so white nor, for that matter, so prone to preen itself as it was in the hotel's palmy '90s. But it still serves as a convenient short cut on a day when Chicago's lake wind makes Michigan Boulevard a hazard, and thus Hannah Winter was using it. She was to have met Marcia at the Michigan Boulevard entrance at two, sharp. And here it was 2.07. When Marcia said two, there she was at two, waiting, lips slightly compressed. (...)
So then here it was 2.07, and Hannah Winter, rather panicky, was rushing along Peacock Alley, dodging loungers, and bell-boys, and traveling salesmen and visiting provincials and the inevitable red-faced delegates with satin badges. In her hurry and nervous apprehension she looked, as she scuttled down the narrow passage, very much like the Rabbit who was late for the Duchess's dinner. Her rubber-heeled oxfords were pounding down hard on the white marble pavement. Suddenly she saw coming swiftly toward her a woman who seemed strangely familiar - a well-dressed woman, harassed-looking, a tense frown between her eyes, and her eyes staring so that they protruded a little, as one who runs ahead of herself in her haste. Hannah had just time to note, in a flash, that the woman's smart hat was slightly askew and that, though she walked very fast, her trim ankles showed the inflexibility of age, when she saw that the woman was not going to get out of her way. Hannah Winter swerved quickly to avoid a collision. So did the other woman. Next instant Hannah Winter brought up with a crash against her own image in that long and tricky mirror which forms a broad full-length panel set in the marble wall at the north end of Peacock Alley. Passerby and the loungers on near-by red plush seats came running, but she was unhurt except for a forehead bump that remained black-and-blue for two weeks or more. The bump did not bother her, nor did the slightly amused concern of those who had come to her assistance. She stood there, her hat still askew, staring at this woman - this woman with her stiff ankles, her slightly protruding eyes, her nervous frown, her hat a little sideways - this stranger - this murderess who had just slain, ruthlessly and forever, a sallow, high-spirited girl of twenty in a wine-coloured silk wedding gown.
”
”
Edna Ferber (Gigolo)
“
And I found myself in a corner of Blackwell’s Book Store. Its dark woods and book-lined walls are not only instantly recognizable but timeless, and for a moment I thought I’d made it back to 2057, and getting to the lab was going to be a simple matter of sprinting up the Broad to Balliol, but as soon as I poked my head round the bookcase, I knew it wasn’t going to be that simple. Outside Blackwell’s bow windows it was snowing. And there was a Daimler parked in front of the Sheldonian.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
Madame Iritosky opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again, looking exactly like Colonel Mering’s globe-eyed ryunkin. “Fish?” Baine said, bending over her with the platter of sole. Round One to our side. Now, if only the seance would go as well.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
And I wouldn't feel any loss because I wouldn't ever have met her. I wondered suddenly if Terence did, if he knew on some level that he hadn't met his true love. And if he did, what did he feel? Mawkish sorrow, like one of his Victorian poems? Or a gnawing of some need unsatisfied? Or just a grayness to everything?
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
The multinationals who’d been backing Darby and Gentilla lost interest, and time travel had been handed over to historians and scientists,
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
But his most important work was that which gave the people of England access to the source of true doctrine. His translation of the Bible wrought a revolution in English thought and the English Bible has proved one of the most effectual powers for righteousness that the world has known. Writing and circulating popular tracts and organizing bands of travelling preachers, Wycliff found to be the most effective means of spreading the teachings of Scripture. So great was his influence that all the power of his bitter enemies could not accomplish more than to drive him from Oxford to his retreat in Lutterworth, which became a centre from which instruction and encouragement went out over the country.
”
”
E.H. Broadbent (The Pilgrim Church: Being Some Account of the Continuance Through Succeeding Centuries of Churches Practising the Principles Taught and Exemplified in The New Testament)
“
Dunworthy glanced anxiously at the displays. His temp was nearly 40.0. “The year is 2054,” he said, bending over him to calm him. “It’s December the twenty-second.
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
All the trunk lines have been engaged. The Americans have been trying to reach Ely to cancel their concert, but the lines are jammed.
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
He watched the screen go gray.
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
Bitsy seems unimpressed, even when I describe the big campaign.
"You sound like Whitman," she says, slow and monotone. "Work, work, work."
I don't react. Instead, I reply by asking about her husband, Whitman Strayer II, a med-school dropout turned venture capitalist who now helps Oxford's elite decide what to do with all their money.
"He's fine." She adds nothing more.
"Still traveling a lot? Last I heard he was partnering with investors in Atlanta? Birmingham? Dallas? Looking for start-ups."
"Yep. As I said, he's fine." She gives me a glance that warns me to back off, so I turn my attention back to the landscape, eager to drink in every gift Mississippi offers.
Behind the picnic table, a batch of invasive kudzu has crept in from a steep ravine. With no natural balance to keep it in check, the Asian species now abuses its power, growing thick, leafy webs across everything in reach. Even the trees with the deepest roots have fallen victim to this vicious vine.
As Bitsy's words echo, I wonder what lesson the kudzu wants to teach me. Have I, too, done better in foreign soil, opting to go far from the challenging conditions of home? Have I been able to thrive out there in Arizona, living without any real competition? Or am I nothing more than a wayward transplant, an aimless seed taking more than my fair share?
”
”
Julie Cantrell (Perennials)
“
No,” said Harris, “if you want rest and change,
you can’t beat a sea trip.” Three Men in a Boat
Jerome K. Jerome
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
He was almost too tired to do that, though he knew he would regret it if he went to bed in his clothes. That was the province of the young and nonarthritic. Colin would wake refreshed in spite of digging buttons and constricting sleeves. Kivrin could wrap up in her too-thin white cloak and rest her head on a tree stump none the worse for wear, but if he so much as omitted a pillow or left his shirt on, he would wake stiff and cramped.
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
I thought it was the kind of bar my guy [Rebus] would drink in,” said Rankin. “Very unaffected, very unpretentious, basic, stripped back. Almost like a private club. Everybody knows everybody else. . . . The kind of Edinburgh I was writing about was this secret Edinburgh that tourists never saw, the stuff that was happening just below the surface, and I thought [Oxford Bar] a nice representation of that.
”
”
Anthony Bourdain (World Travel: An Irreverent Guide)
“
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London Tour Package From Bangalore
“
On our return from Oxford, no further reference was made to the morning’s episode. In the family tradition, it was brushed under the carpet with many other dusty remnants of psychological and emotional detritus, regarded as being too insignificant to merit any consideration in that rarified atmosphere where emotional issues were never discussed because of the threat they might pose to the intellect.
”
”
Jane Hawking (Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen)
“
The sun was already long past the spire when Garrick purchased a mug of coffee from his regular man on the tip of Oxford Street. But his palate had been educated by 21st century coffee, and he judged this mug as bilge water not fit for the Irish.
”
”
Eoin Colfer (The Reluctant Assassin (W.A.R.P., #1))
“
In the summer of 1979 another boyfriend, Adam Russell, completed his language degree at Oxford and decided to spend a year travelling. He left unspoken the fact that he hoped the friendship between himself and Diana could be renewed and developed upon his return. When he arrived home a year later it was too late. A friend told him: “You’ve only got one rival, the Prince of Wales.
”
”
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
“
The men in her life were clean-cut, well-bred, reliable, unpretentious and good company. “Diana is an Uptown girl who has never gone in for downtown men,” observes Rory Scott. If they wore a uniform or had been cast aside by Sarah so much the better. She felt rather sorry for Sarah’s rejects and often tried, unsuccessfully, to be asked out by them.
So she did washing for William van Straubenzee, one of Sarah’s old boyfriends, and ironed the shirts of Rory Scott, who had then starred in a television documentary about Trooping the Colour, and Diana regularly stayed for weekends at his parents’ farm near Petworth, West Sussex. She continued caring for his wardrobe during her royal romance, on one occasion delivering a pile of freshly laundered shirts to the back entrance of St. James’s Palace, where Rory was on duty, in order to avoid the press. James Boughey was another military man who took her out to restaurants and the theatre and Diana visited Simon Berry and Adam Russell at their rented house on the Blenheim estate when they were undergraduates at Oxford.
There were lots of boyfriends but none became lovers. The sense of destiny which Diana had felt from an early age shaped, albeit unconsciously, her relationships with the opposite sex. She says: “I knew I had to keep myself tidy for what lay ahead.”
As Carolyn observes: “I’m not a terrible spiritual person but I do believe that she was meant to do what she is doing and she certainly believes that. She was surrounded by this golden aura which stopped men going any further, whether they would have liked to or not, it never happened. She was protected somehow by a perfect light.”
It is a quality noted by her old boyfriends. Rory Scott says roguishly: “She was very sexually attractive and the relationship was not a platonic one as far as I was concerned but it remained that way. She was always a little aloof, you always felt that there was a lot you would never know about her.”
In the summer of 1979 another boyfriend, Adam Russell, completed his language degree at Oxford and decided to spend a year travelling. He left unspoken the fact that he hoped the friendship between himself and Diana could be renewed and developed upon his return. When he arrived home a year later it was too late. A friend told him: “You’ve only got one rival, the Prince of Wales.
”
”
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
“
Ashes to ashes. Dust to nonsignificance.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
I propose that an area of no more than 300 square miles, centered roughly upon Henley-on-Thames, has made this quintessentially British town Britain's 'small town and village murder capital'.
”
”
Thomas Newport (BINOCLARITY: A travel along the length of the River Thames and into the heart of the British psyche)
“
Fuchs’s transfer of scientific secrets to the Soviet Union between 1941 and 1943 was one of the most concentrated spy hauls in history, some 570 pages of copied reports, calculations, drawings, formulae and diagrams, the designs for uranium enrichment, a step-by-step guide to the fast-moving development of the atomic weapon. Much of this material was too complex and technical to be coded and sent by radio, and so Ursula passed the documents to Sergei through a “brush contact,” a surreptitious handover imperceptible to a casual observer. If Ursula needed to pass on urgent information, or bulky files, she alerted Aptekar by means of an agreed “signal site”: “I had to travel to London and, at a certain time and in a certain place, drop a small piece of chalk and tread on it.” Two days later she would cycle to the rendezvous site, a side road six miles beyond the junction of the A40 and A34 on the road from Oxford to Cheltenham; Aptekar would drive from London in the military attaché’s car and arrive at the pickup site at an appointed time for a swift handover. At one of these meetings, the Soviet officer presented her with a new Minox camera for making microdots and copying documents, and a small but powerful transmitter measuring just six by eight inches, a sixth of the size of her homemade radio and easier to conceal. She dismantled her own equipment, but kept it in reserve “for emergency use.” Fuchs was privy to the innermost workings of the atomic project and he held nothing back. In the first year, he and Peierls wrote no fewer than eleven reports together, including seminal papers on isotope separation and calculating the destructive power of
”
”
Ben Macintyre (Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy)
“
For the past two days I’ve been on the river with an Oxford don who quotes Herodotus, a lovesick young man who quotes Tennyson, a bulldog, and a cat,” I said. “I played it by ear.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
He rang off, pocketed the disk,
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
As Ivar traveled downtown to the Wall Street offices of Lee Higginson, he shifted gears. His pitch to Durant wouldn’t be an American monopoly – that venture clearly had floundered. He certainly wouldn’t mention film. Instead, Ivar would dangle a new idea before Durant: the prospect of Americans investing in foreign monopolies. Antitrust laws prohibited a match monopoly in the United States, but nothing prevented American investors from buying into monopolies abroad. Ivar’s match monopoly in Sweden was a highly profitable model. It could be just the beginning. Ivar recalled the extraordinary scheme orchestrated during the seventeenth century by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, who had formed the South Sea Company to assume England’s national debt. The scheme had become known as the South Sea Bubble, for the sharp increase in the price of South Sea Company shares. In exchange for the South Sea Company assuming its debt, the British government had given the company a monopoly on trade to the South Seas. The deal helped keep England solvent, and led to a boom in the business and share price of the company. It was an audacious deal, but a simple idea. And the idea could be replicated; it wasn’t limited to England and the South Seas or to a time two hundred years earlier. In theory, if a government needed money and a company wanted a monopoly, both sides could benefit from a similar compact – anytime, anywhere, with any product.
”
”
Frank Partnoy (The Match King: Ivar Kreuger and the Financial Scandal of the Century)
“
Which room is breakfast in?” I asked Baine. “The breakfast room, sir,” he said.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
I had gone off with a contemp and a complete stranger—to say nothing of the dog—and left my contact waiting on the station platform or the tracks or in a boathouse somewhere.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
Halfway through the day, Megan started dicking around on the internet. She
made her browser window as small as she could, paused for a second, and then
looked up “Carrie Wilkins.” She found Carrie’s website, and on it, this bio:
Hi, my name’s Carrie. I’m 26. I make things. I paint and I write, but mostly I
design. I like to make things beautiful, or creative. I make my own food and I’m
trying to grow my own beets. A lot of people around me seem unhappy and I
don’t understand why. I freelance because I know I’d go insane if I couldn’t
make my own schedule—I believe variety is the zest of life. I know I want a dog
someday soon, and sometimes I make lunch at 3 a.m.
I believe in the power of collaboration, and I’d love to work with you!
What a total asshole. What does she have, some kind of a pact with Satan?
The picture next to Carrie’s bio had some kind of heavy filter on it that made
it look vintage, and she had a friendly but aloof look on her face. She was
flanked on both sides by plants and was wearing an oxford shirt with fancy
shorts and had a cool necklace. It was an outfit, for sure, like all of Carrie’s
clothes were outfits, which Megan always thought of as outdated or something
only children did.
The website linked to a blog, which was mostly photos of Carrie doing
different things. It didn’t take too long to find the picture of her with the llama
with a caption about how she and her boss got it from a homeless guy.
And then just products. Pictures and pictures of products, and then little
captions about how the products inspired her.
Motherfucker, thought Megan. She doesn’t get it at all. It was like looking at
an ad for deodorant or laundry soap that made you feel smelly and like you’d
been doing something wrong that the person in the ad had already figured out,
but since it was an ad, there was no real way to smell the person and judge for
yourself whether or not the person stank, and that was what she hated, hated,
hated most of all.
I make things, gee-wow. You think you’re an artist? Do you really thing this
blog is a representation of art, that great universalizer? That great transmigrator?
This isolating schlock that makes me feel like I have to buy into you and your
formula for happiness? Work as a freelance designer, grow beets, travel, have
lots of people who like you, and above all have funsies!
“Everything okay?” asked Jillian.
“Yeah, what?”
“Breathing kind of heavy over there, just making sure you were okay and
everything.”
“Oh, uh-huh, I’m fine,” said Megan.
“It’s not . . . something I’m doing, is it?”
“What? No. No, I’m fine,” said Megan.
How could someone not understand that other people could be unhappy?
What kind of callous, horrible bullshit was that to say to a bunch of twenty-yearolds, particularly, when this was the time in life when things were even more
acutely painful than they were in high school, that nightmare fuck, because now
there were actual stakes and everyone was coming to grips with the fact that
they’re going to die and that life might be empty and unrewarding. Why even
bring it up? Why even make it part of your mini-bio?
”
”
Halle Butler (Jillian)
“
Of the early founders, the most eminent proponent of physical geography as a scientific entity was undoubtedly the German polymath Alexander von Humboldt. On his many travels, he combined observations with measurements of temperature, pressure, and the Earth’s magnetic field, and made generalizations about the geographical distribution of vegetation, global-scale patterns of temperature (depicted by isotherms on maps), the ways in which temperature falls and vegetation varies with increasing altitude (on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, for example), the alignment of volcanoes, and the course of ocean currents. In his major works, written around the middle of the 19th century, such as
Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe
, published in 1849, he emphasized not only relationships within the natural geo-ecosphere but also linkages to human societies. A year earlier, Mary Somerville, based at the University of Oxford, published
Physical Geography
and defined the subject as ‘a description of the Earth, the sea and the air, with their inhabitants animal and vegetable, of the distribution of these organized beings and the causes of that distribution’.
”
”
John A. Matthews (Geography: A Very Short Introduction)
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
Edward de Vere—far and away the favorite candidate today—the eccentric 17th Earl of Oxford, who traveled through the precise areas of northern Italy with which Shakespeare seems most familiar?
”
”
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
“
There is nothing more helpful than shouted instructions, particularly incomprehensible ones.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
It didn’t sound like a nightingale,” Terence said. “Nightingales sing of summer ‘in full-throated ease and pour their souls abroad in ecstasy.’ This didn’t sound like that. Listen.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
He sounded time-lagged, but probably wasn’t. All of Lady Schrapnell’s new recruits sound time-lagged.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
It was physically impossible for the verger to be suffering from time-lag, unless it was somehow contagious.
”
”
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
“
They’re saying it’s some sort of biological weapon,” Colin said. “They’re saying it escaped from a laboratory.
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
Probability was projecting an 85 percent morbidity rate with 32 percent mortality even with antimicrobials and T-cell enhancement, and that was without adding in the supply shortages and so many of the staff being down. As it was, we had nearly nineteen percent mortality and a good number of the cases are still critical.
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))
“
The original regulations had required it in every case of “unidentified disease or suspicion of contagion,” but those had been passed in the first hysteria after the Pandemic,
”
”
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1))