The Rabbit Back Literature Society

Everybody comes to the library naked. That's why they come here - to dress themselves in books.

Everybody knows that no healthy person would take up writing novels. Healthy people do healthy things. All this darned hoopla and hot air about literature—what is it really but mental derangement run through a printing press?

Happiness, in other words, is a temporary glitch in evolution.

Do you want to know how to write novels? I’ll tell you the secret: start on page one and keep going, in order, until you come to the last page. Then stop.

She’d read more than was healthy, hundreds of books every year. Some of them she read twice, or even three times, before returning them. Some of them she would check out again after letting them sink in a while. She’d thought at the time that books were at their best when you’d read them two or three times.

Everybody comes to the library naked. That’s why they come here—to dress themselves in books.

You don't read books." She'd meant it as an accusation, as the worst sort of insult. She said it maliciously.

Are writers the torchbearers of humanity? It’s a romantic idea, but it’s complete rubbish. We writers are the crocodiles in the river.

Besides, I don’t understand people who read a book for pleasure and then ruminate on the book’s ideas. Paper was invented so we wouldn’t have to keep all those thoughts in our heads.

Martti, dear, we should never talk about what we’re writing, or our writing might turn into nothing but talk.

Later she came to realise that under one reality there’s always another. And another one under that.

It seems to me,” her father finally said with a sigh, “that Emperor Rat is one of those things that we’re supposed to forget about. He’ll come if he’s going to come, but we shouldn’t start dwelling on it, and we certainly can’t start actively expecting it to happen.

Dear creatures, sometimes we are allowed to experience wondrous things and go places we couldn't reach even in dreams. Only someone who hasn't learned anything from it all can think that they'll be able to hold on to what they've found forever.

A happy creature stops developing, so happiness is a product of being content and development is a product of discontent. Happiness, in other words, is a temporary glitch in evolution.

A person shouldn’t talk too much, Ella realised. With writing, you could construct a whole world, but talking too much could demolish it.

Her works are said to be too far from reality to be considered real literature. “Why doesn’t she write about life?” the people of Rabbit Back ask.

Ella had asked the writer how it felt to see her own works published. Seläntö had smiled sweetly at her and whispered, “You know what? It makes you understand why a dog eats its own vomit.

Where would we be if anything at all could turn up in books?

Research brings order to the world. It makes things clearer, helps us to understand things. Could there be any more joy than that? Did you ever put together puzzles as a child? The universe is a puzzle with billions of pieces. Putting it together is society's highest shared responsibility, our right and our joy - and not only that, it is what separates us from the whole rest of creation, with a few possible exceptions.

You’re a literary person. If you ask me, there are passages in the Bible that a lover of literature has to appreciate, even if they have no interest in religious matters. The Book of Job, for example. A great mystery, and full of wonderful metaphors. None of this purple prose.

He was convinced that it was best that he remain dressed in the company of others.

People need an interested listener. They thirst for the undivided attention of someone once they've left childhood, so they invented God, someone to watch them and listen to them all the time.

Minä olen tietenkin maksanut mieleni valmiudesta tietyn hinnan. Ihmettelijä ihmettelee omia papanoitaankin. Otetaan nyt vaikka lapset. Minulla on lapsia. Tai ainakin niitä sanotaan "lapsiksi", mutta mitä ne oikeastaan ovat? Mitä se tarkoittaa? Ne tulivat maailmaan minun jalkojeni välistä ja elivät alussa minun kehoni nesteellä, jota alkoi tihkua ulos minun rinnostani. Nyt niillä on minun talossani meneillään omituisten rituaalien päättymätön sarja, jota ne kutsuvat "leikkimiseksi". Ne puhuvat sanoilla, jotka ovat minulle outoja. Kun ne katsovat minua, minä en voi koskaan olla täysin varma siitä, mitä merkillisyyksiä niiden silmien takana liikkuu.

She was a clay pot, and she’d been broken in pieces. There used to be something inside her, and now that it had spilled for the use of someone else, all that was left was a cracked, dried-out shell.

She said that a writer should know how to think about everything there is to think about, even when everyone else is thinking only about the possible, or the probable. That was damn good advice.

Spisovatel Zimota objevil něco důležitého: ti nejšťastnější lidé ze všech nebyli ničím jiným než matně uvědomělými trávicími soustavami, které občas dosáhly orgasmu. Rozum a myšlení lidé ve skutečnosti potřebovali jen k opatření potravy. Jakmile má člověk plné břicho a zásoby potravin někde po ruce, myšlení se zredukuje na minimum a starosti a potřeby se postupně vytratí.

Thinking might be fun at first, but then you got hooked on it. People were even encouraged to do it in school, and in many popular pastimes. In the end, though, it made you miserable.

The happiest people were the ones who existed as little more than dimly conscious food-ingestion devices that enjoyed the occasional orgasm. Intelligence and thinking were really only needed for acquiring food.

Amateur detectives in fiction had always annoyed Ella. They were so unrealistic. She didn’t intend to be the Rabbit Back version of Miss Marple or a cheap Baker Street knock-off, and she really didn’t like the idea of making the tabloids. That was no way to advance an academic career. She didn’t want to be an instrument of justice. She just wanted to do some literary research and earn a living.