“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”

“A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.”

“There are some who go through life with a shadow hanging over them, particularly if they live in a building which has long wide awnings.”

“Fetching objects for people who are too lazy to fetch them for themselves is never a pleasant task, particularly when the people are insulting you.”

“It has been said that the hardest job in the world is raising a child, but the people who says this have probably never worked at a comb factory or captured pirates on the high seas.”

“The thing you hope will never happen to you might just happen to someone else instead, who has been spending their life dreading the thing that will happen to you.”

“Anyone who knew Violet well could tell she was thinking hard, because her long hair was tied up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes. Violet had a real knack for inventing and building strange devices, so her brain was often filled with images of pulleys, levers, and gears, and she never wanted to be distracted by something as trivial as her hair.”