“He could not help, too, rolling his large eyes round him as he ate, and chuckling with the possibility that he might one day be lord of all this scene of almost unimaginable luxury and splendor.”
″‘You seemed so far away,’ Miss Honey whispered, awestruck. ‘Oh, I was. I was flying past the stars on silver wings,’ Matilda said. ‘It was wonderful.‘”
“Seriously, a thirty-something woman shouldn’t be daydreaming about a fictional character in a two-hundred-year-old world to the point where it interfered with her very real and much more important life and relationships. Of course she shouldn’t.”
“I suppose it was mainly us newcomers who talked about ‘dream futures’ that winter, though a number of veterans did too . . . It couldn’t last, of course, but like I say, just for those few months, we somehow managed to live in this cosy state of suspension in which we could ponder our lives without the usual boundaries.”
“With his hair still combed neat four thousand, six hundred and ninety-two feet! Then he’ll land in a fish bowl. He’ll manage just fine. Don’t ask how he’ll manage. That’s his job. Not mine.”
“What an Opening Night! What a night! What a sight!
I’ll host up the curtains! The crowds will crowd in! And my Circus McGurkus will promptly begin with a welcoming toot on my Welcoming Horn”
“On one wall of Roy’s bedroom was a poster from the Livingston rodeo that showed a cowboy riding a ferocious humpbacked bull. The cowboy held one hand high in the air, and his hat was flying off his head. Every night before turning off the lights, Roy would lie on his pillow and stare at the poster, imagining that he was the sinewy young bull rider in the picture.”
″‘How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!’
I said I’d rather be in a Charlotte Bronte.
‘Which would be nicest- Jane with a touch of Charlotte, or Charlotte with a touch of Jane.‘”