The collection / 40 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1950 AD

A man says something. Sometimes it turns out to be the truth, but this has nothing to do with the man who says it.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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02c. 1950 AD

I once broke up with a boy because he wrote me an awful poem.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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03c. 1950 AD

I didn't want a world in which I had to choose between blind human babies and tortured monkey ones. To be frank, that's the sort of choice I expect science to protect me from, not give me.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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04c. 1950 AD

There was something appealing in thinking of a character with a secret life that her author knew nothing about. Slipping off while the author's back was turned, to find love in her own way. Showing up just in time to deliver the next bit of dialogue with an innocent face.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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05c. 1950 AD

The Indians did not like to see anything odd -- a white squirrel, for instance. . . . They thought such oddities were messages, were omens of evil. . . . And the Indians put a great deal of faith in dreams.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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06c. 1950 AD

Allegra's Austen wrote about the impact of financial need on the intimate lives of women. If she'd worked in a bookstore, Allegra would have shelved Austen in the horror section.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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07c. 1950 AD

I couldn't fit my whole self into a marriage, no matter who my husband was. There were parts of me that John liked, and different parts for the others, but no one could deal with all of me, So I'd lop some part off, but then I'd start missing it, wanting it back.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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08c. 1950 AD

Owls hoot in B flat, cuckoos in D, but the water ousel sings in the voice of the stream. She builds her nest back of the waterfalls so the water is a lullaby to the little ones. Must be where they learn it.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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09c. 1950 AD

So many problems, however infinitely varied they first appear, turn out to be matters of money. I can't tell you how much this offends me. The value of money is a scam perpetrated by those who have it over those who dont; it's the Emperor's New Clothes gone global.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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10c. 1950 AD

who knows you better than your own brother?

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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11c. 1950 AD

Every mother can easily imagine losing a child. Motherhood is always half loss anyway. The three-year-old is lost at five, the five-year-old at nine. We consort with ghosts, even as we sit and eat with, scold and kiss, their current corporeal forms. We speak to people who have vanished and, when they answer us, they do the same. Naturally, the information in these speeches is garbled in the translation.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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12c. 1950 AD

I’m seeing so much of America today,” Luya kept telling Lowell in nervously accented English. It became a personal catchphrase for him — whenever things were not to his liking, he’d say that — I’m seeing so much of America today.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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13c. 1950 AD

I am the daughter of a psychologist. I know that the thing ostensibly being studied is rarely the thing being studied. (We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, p. 99)

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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14c. 1950 AD

Maybe anosognosia, the inability to see your own disability, is the human condition and I'm the only one who doesn't suffer from it.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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15c. 1950 AD

Language does this to our memories—simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An oft-told story is like a photograph in a family album; eventually, it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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16c. 1950 AD

What we have instead are false memories aroused later and more pertinent to this later perspective than to the original events. Sometimes in matters of great emotion, one representation, retaining all the original intensity, comes to replace another, which is then discarded and forgotten. The new representation is called a screen memory. A screen memory is a compromise between remembering something painful and defending yourself against that very remembering.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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17c. 1950 AD

We call them feelings because we feel them.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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18c. 1950 AD

We used to believe that memories were best retrieved in the same place that they were first laid down. Like everything else we think we know, that's not so clear anymore.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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19c. 1950 AD

The happening and telling are very different things. This doesn’t mean that the story isn’t true,only that I honestly don’t know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how to tell it. Language does this to our memories, simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An off-told story is like a photograph in a family album. Eventually it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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20c. 1950 AD

An "attack on SeaWorld" might mean a bomb, or it might mean graffiti and glitter and a cream pie in the face. The government doesn't always seem to distinguish between the two.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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21c. 1950 AD

I admired her choices though I wouldn't have made them.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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22c. 1950 AD

The idea of our own rationality...was convincing to us only because we so wished to be convinced. To any impartial observer, could such a thing exist, the sham was patent. Emotion and instinct were the basis of all our decisions, our actions, everything we valued, the way we saw the world. Reason and rationality were a thin coat of paint on a ragged surface.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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23c. 1950 AD

Without our listening, all the stories are the same story.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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24c. 1950 AD

Emotion and instinct were the basis of all our decisions, our actions, everything we valued, the way we saw the world. Reason and rationality were a thin coat of paint on a ragged surface.

Karen Joy Fowler / quote

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