I can imagine living without food. I cannot imagine living without books.
(Alice Foote MacDougall (1867-1945), U.S. businesswoman. The Autobiography of a Business Woman, ch. 2 (1928).
Recalling her childhood self-education in her grandfather's library, where she read works by Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Louisa May Alcott, Shakespeare, Smollett, Shelley, Spenser, Browning, Emerson, and George Eliot, among other writers.)
“Imagine that the world is made out of love. Now imagine that it isn’t. Imagine a story where everything goes wrong, where everyone has their back against the wall, where everyone is in pain and acting selfishly because if they don’t, they’ll die. Imagine a story, not of good against evil, but of need against need against need, where everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone is to blame.”
