Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is so good every time. One of those books I seem to be always reading, always re-reading. Published in 1865, which I find incredible.
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”
“I don’t much care where –”
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
“You used to be much more…”muchier.” You’ve lost your muchness.”
“Curiouser and curiouser!”
“Be what you would seem to be- or, if you’d like it put more simply- Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”
“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
“It’ll be no use their putting their heads down and saying, ‘Come up again, dear!’ I shall only look up and say, ‘Who am I, then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I’ll come up — if not, I’ll stay down here till I’m somebody else’ — but, oh, dear!”
Ah. I want a crown. And an apron, too.