Alexandra

“It revealed the sheer dependence of the British, who, astonishingly, could not manage to do basic things like bake bread or get safely from one place to another without words stolen from other countries.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Let’s read too much because otherwise we risk reading too little.”
― Vanessa Zoltan, Praying with Jane Eyre: Reflections on Reading as a Sacred Practice

“The bees are at work int he boiling air, legs fat with pollen the priesets say they stole. But her bees are no thieves.

The bees. They are their own. It was one of the first lessons they taught her, even as she coaxed them to the skeps. They are not dumb beasts: they have their own mind even if it is the mind of the king bee. This is why they are spoken of so often in church, their obedience, their duty.
...

but Lisbet knows what only those who tend to them know. That wildness is the key to their success, that freedom sweetens their honey. That you cannot truly keep bees. You can only make them want to stay.”
― Kiran Millwood Hargrave, The Dance Tree

“New words in English were a game to him, for in understanding the word he always came to understand something about English history or culture itself. He delighted when common words were, unexpectedly, formed from other words he knew. Hussy was a compound of house and wife. Holiday was a compound of holy and day. Bedlam came, implausibly, from Bethlehem. Goodbye was, incredibly, a shortened version of God be with you.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel