Quotes from Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books

“If a book cover has raised lettering, metallic lettering, or raised metallic lettering, then it is telling the reader: Hello. I am an easy-to-read work on espionage, romance, a celebrity, and/or murder. To readers who do not care for such things, this lettering tells them: Hello. I am crap.”
― Paul Collins, quote from Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books

“Many people are partial to the notion that . . . all writers are somehow mere vessels for Truth and Beauty when they compose. That we are not really in control. This is a variation on that twee little fable that writers like to pass off on gullible readers, that a character can develop a will of his own and 'take over a book.' This makes writing sound supernatural and mysterious, like possession by faeries. The reality tends to involve a spare room, a pirated copy of MS Word, and a table bought on sale at Target. A character can no more take over your novel than an eggplant and a jar of cumin can take over your kitchen.”
― Paul Collins, quote from Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books

“If you grew up in a rural area, you have seen how farmhouses come and go, but the dent left by cellars is permanent. There is something unbreakable in that hand-dug foundational gouge into the earth. Books are the cellars of civilization: when cultures crumble away, their books remain out of sheer stupid solidity.”
― Paul Collins, quote from Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books

“Historically, dust jackets are a new concern for authors; you don't see them much before the 1920s. And dust jacket is a strange name for this contrivance, as if books had anything to fear from dust. If you store a book properly, standing up, then the jacket doesn't cover the one part of the book that is actually exposed to dust, which is the top of the pages. So a dust jacket is no such thing at all; it is really a sort of advertising wrapper, like the brown paper sheath on a Hershey's bar. On this wrapper goes the manufacturer's name, the ingredients--some blithering about unforgettable characters or gemlike prose or gripping narrative--and a brief summation of who does what to whom in our gripping, unforgettable, gemlike object.”
― Paul Collins, quote from Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books

“Leatherbound books are an expensive form of wallpaper, and yet every English nobleman’s home seems to have had them. Their endless sets of the works of Cooper and Scott and Goethe, in finely tanned bindings with marbled endpapers, all end up with this sort of dealer sooner or later. I look through a set of Cooper and, without surprise, find uncut pages: these books were never actually read.”
― Paul Collins, quote from Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books

“…I had a good title already. My book was originally called Loser: A Brief History of Notable Failures. But American publishers don’t like this. Losing is a bad thing in our country. It’s not allowed.”
― Paul Collins, quote from Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books

“You see, literary culture is perpetually dead and dying; and when some respected writer discovers and loudly proclaims the finality of this fact, it is a forensic marker of their own decomposition. It means that they have artistically expired within the last ten years, and that they will corporeally expire within the next twenty.”
― Paul Collins, quote from Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books

“What you mean to find matters less than what you do find.”
― Paul Collins, quote from Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books

“I noticed you made a bee-line for their bookcases." It is the oldest and most incorrigible trait of the book-lover.”
― Paul Collins, quote from Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books

“It really is an APPALLING thing to think of the people who have no books...It is only by books that most men and women can lift themselves above the sordidness of life. No books! Yet for the greater part of humanity that is the common lot. We may, in fact, divide our fellow-creatures into two branches - those who read books and those who do not.”
― Paul Collins, quote from Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books

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“She belongs to the winter that is past, to the darkness that is over, and has no part or lot in the life I shall lead for the next six months. Oh, I could dance and sing for joy that the spring is here! What a ressurection of beauty there is in my garden, and of brightest hope in my heart.”
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“What did he do?”
I whipped around, startled. I had been so immersed in my own thoughts that I hadn’t even noticed Philantha standing into the doorway to one of the sitting rooms.
“Pardon?”
“Well, in my experience, it’s usually the man who bumbles about causing most of the problems in relationships of romance,” she said. “So, naturally, I assumed that your young man has done or said or thought something that caused you to come bursting in like a hurricane. Am I correct?”
I shook my head so violently the braid coiled around my head threatened to come loose. “We’re not in a…relationship of romance. He’s just my friend.”
Philantha made a sound surprisingly like a snicker. “Truly?” she asked. “I suppose that’s why he’s been with you most evenings.”
“Like I said, we’re friends. And we haven’t seen each other in a long time.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I may not care about it--or at least I didn’t, until recently--but I do hear some of the court gossip when I visit the college. The noble students, they bring it with them, you know. And one of the stories is how the Earl of Rithia and his wife are scrambling to find eligible matches for their son.”
I felt suddenly dizzy for no reason, and a hot flush--disturbingly like the jealous feeling I had experienced at the inn--rushed through me. “Matches?” I repeated.
“Girls, young women, marriageable prospects. Strange, how suddenly they started. Right after the princess came back, it’s been noted. As if they had had hope for another match before, and it was ruined.”
“Me?” I asked. “People think Kiernan’s parents wanted him to marry me? That’s…ridiculous. Princesses don’t marry earls--a duke, maybe, but not an earl, not unless he’s foreign and brings some grand alliance. And besides, we’re just--”
“Friends,” Philantha finished. “I know. That’s what you keep saying.” She eyed me, before saying, “They haven’t had much luck, though, from the gossip. He’s polite to everyone they trot out, but nothing more. But that’s neither here nor there, since you don’t love him.”
I glared at her, my face and chest still filled with that rush of heat.
“In fact, he’s made you angry, hasn’t he?”
“He did. Well, I said…Yes, we fought. He says that Na--the princess--wants to see me. And I told him that he couldn’t bring her to me, that I didn’t want to see her. He said that if she asked, he would have to. But he’s wormed his way out of stickier situations than that. He could find a way to avoid it, if he wanted to.”
“Then perhaps he doesn’t want to,” Philantha answered before gliding away up the stairs and out of sight.
I had plenty of time to mull over Philantha’s words, because I didn’t see Kiernan for the next three days. It was the longest we had been parted since I returned to the city, and even through my anger at him it drove me to distraction. I mangled my spells even worse than usual, spilled ink, and tripped so frequently that Philantha threatened to call Kiernan to the house herself and turn him into a sparrow if we didn’t make up. Her eyes glinted dangerously when she said it, and only that was enough to force away a bit of my muddleheadedness.”
― Eilis O'Neal, quote from The False Princess

“Assholes are like weeds, a bitch to get rid of and when you do another one grows back in its place.”
― Jonathan Kellerman, quote from When the Bough Breaks

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