The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories Quotes

“Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: 'My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, "The Cookiepants Hypotenuse."' Or else they get unbearably cutesy: 'My cat Ootsywootums has given me all my best ideas, hasn't oo, squeezums?”
― Connie Willis, The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories

“I was on a walking tour of Oxford colleges once with a group of bored and unimpressable tourists. They yawned at Balliol's quad, T.E. Lawrence's and Churchill's portraits, and the blackboard Einstein wrote his E=mc2 on. Then the tour guide said, 'And this is the Bridge of Sighs, where Lord Peter proposed (in Latin) to Harriet,' and everyone suddenly came to life and began snapping pictures. Such is the power of books.”
― Connie Willis, The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories

“The entire range of human experience is present in a church choir, including, but not restricted to jealousy, revenge, horror, pride, incompetence (the tenors have never been on the right note in the entire history of church choirs, and the basses have never been on the right page), wrath, lust and existential despair.”
― Connie Willis, The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories

“I learned everything I know about plot from Dame Agatha (Christie).”
― Connie Willis, The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories

“Yeah, like this one carny up in Fargo. It had a big sign saying 'See the Siamese twins,' and everybody pays a buck, thinking they're gonna see two people hooked together. And when they get there it's a cage with two Siamese kittens in it. Like that.”
― Connie Willis, The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories

“Do you know the only way you can tell for sure the deer are there?" Mel shook his head. "By the wolves," he said.”
― Connie Willis, The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories

“This gave me an early taste for humorous authors, of which there were—and are—far too few (though there are lots who labor under the misapprehension that they're funny.)”
― Connie Willis, The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories

“There was a curse. It lay on all of us, though we didn’t know it. Anyway Lacau didn’t. Standing there, reading the tomb seal out loud to me in my cage, he didn’t have a clue who the warning was meant for. And the Sandalman, standing on the black ridge watching the bodies burn, had no idea he had already fallen victim to it.”
― Connie Willis, The Winds of Marble Arch