“I think art comes from some sense of discomfort with the world, some sense of not quite fitting with it.”

“Everything is true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in another sense.”

“That is the bitterness of art: you see a good effect, and some nonsense about sense continually intervenes.”

“It occurred to me that there have always been selkie women: women who did not seem to belong to this world, because they did not fit into prevailing notions of what women were supposed to be. And if you did not fit into those notions, in some sense you weren't a woman. Weren't even quite human. The magical animal woman is, or can be, a metaphor for those sorts of women.”

“I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign.”

“To read" actually comes from the Latin reri "to calculate, to think" which is not only the progenitor of "read" but of "reason" as well, both of which hail from the Greek arariskein "to fit." Aside from giving us "reason," arariskein also gives us an unlikely sibling, Latin arma meaning "weapons." It seems that "to fit" the world or to make sense of it requires either reason or arms.”