... an Oxford love story.

“I had never known the rapture of being in love. I had longed for it, but I had never guessed how wonderfully wonderful it was. It came to me. I shuddered and wavered like a fountain in the wind. I was more helpless and flew lightlier than a shred of thistledown among the stars.”

—Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson, p. 37 (of 252).

... the dictionary.

Intelligence which is overproud of itself belies itself.

—Philosophical and Phenomenological Research, 10:8, 1949; sample sentence for entry "overproud" in the Oxford English Dictionary.

... a proem.

Give my words immortal charm.

—Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, invocation to Venus, Book I, translated by William Ellery Leonard.

Another fusty translation, that of H. A. J. Munro, gives this as, "Lend my lays an everliving charm." Tee hee!

... a novel.

“No one grows up. That’s one of the sickest lies they ever tell you. People change. People compromise. People get stranded in situations they don’t want to be in ... and they make the best of it. But don’t try to tell me it’s some kind of ... glorious preordained ascent into emotional maturity. It’s not.”

I said uneasily, “Has something happened? Between you and Lisa?”

“No. Everything’s fine. Life is wonderful. I love them all. But ...” He looked away, his whole body visibly tensing. “Only because I’d go insane if I didn’t. Only because I have to make it work. And it’s not even that hard, anymore. It’s pure habit. But ... I used to think there’d be more. I used to think that if you changed from ... valuing one thing to valuing another, it was because you’d learned something new, understood something better. And it’s not like that at all. I just value what I’m stuck with. That’s it, that’s the whole story. People make a virtue out of necessity. They sanctify what they can’t escape.”

—Greg Egan, Distress, p. 69 of 342.