We have all been somebody else sometime, and we clutch at the shadows of our old selves, hardly believing they are shadows." "It's a good deal a matter of imagination, isn't it ?" asked Dan, idling with the paddle.
"Oh, but I haven't a bit of that.

That's one thing I'm not troubled with, and I'm sorry for it.

When I look up at the stars I think of the most hideous formula for calculating their distances from the earth.
When I read in a novel that it was a night of stars, I immediately wonder what particular stars.

It used to make dear Grandfather Kelton furiously indignant to find a moon appearing in novels contrary to the almanac; he used to check up all the moons, and he once thought of writing a thesis on the 'Erroneous Lunar Calculations of Recent Novelists,' but decided that it didn't really make any difference.

And of course it doesn't." As they discussed novels new and old, he drew in his paddle and crept nearer her.