Maggie

“It seemed...that intelligence wasn't as pure and unalterable a characteristic as people believed. Being intelligent was like being good: you could be virtuous in one person's company and yet wicked in another's. You could be intelligent with one person and stupid with another. It was partly to do with confidence...In a way she had been more confident when she had been eighteen and foolish. At twenty-three, with Michael, she felt less confident and therefore less intelligent.”
― Julian Barnes, Staring at the Sun

“People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.”
― Chinua Achebe

“I believed that I wanted to be a poet, but deep down I just wanted to be a poem.”
― Jaime Gil de Biedma

“Having to read footnotes resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love.”
― Noel Coward