Even the contemplative life is only an effort, Nora my dear, to hide the body so the feet won’t stick out. - Djuna Barnes

Dusty books are my one real passion. New books are like young girls — fit for nothing. A secondhand book is like a person who has traveled; it is only when a book has been handled by several persons and has become dirty that it's fit for contemplation.

She was broad and tall, and though her skin was the skin of a child, there could be seen coming, early in her life, the design that was to be the weather-beaten grain of her face, that wood in the work; the tree coming forward in her, an undocumented record of time.

Any man can look upon the head in death, but no man can look upon the feet.