In the strife and struggle of this great world where most of us lose each other so strangely, it is impossible to be spoken to out of the old times without a softened emotion. You so belong to the days when the qualities that have done me most good since, were growing in my boyish heart that I cannot end my answer to you lightly.

We are all

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Sorry I was so glum. I’m in a cursed mood and can’t bear the human face.

Virginia Woolf

Letter to Ethel Smyth

10th February 1933

I’ve got no advice on these up and down times of elation & depression you seem to have, but I can tell you that time is very dangerous without a rigid routine. If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time, you’ll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival.

Flannery O’Connor

Letter to Betty... See more

As to your notion of an allegory, there is none. Charlotte’s Web is a tale of the animals in my barn, not of the people in my life. When you read it, just relax. Any attempt to find allegorical meanings is bound to end disastrously, for no meanings are in there. I ought to know.

E. B. White

Letter to John Detmold

10th February 1953

Since books are to libraries what asphalt is to highway departments, I assume that Indiana is also asking donations from suppliers of asphalt for her roads. Or has it been decided that asphalt is worth good money, and that books are not?

Kurt Vonnegut

Letter to Charles Ewick, Indiana State Library

10th February 1983