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Quote by Emily Temple

“Girls, on the other hand, are master idolaters. They are like catholics in that way, or satanists. All gilded shrine and ceremony. All theme and ritual and symbol. They hunger for the gaudy trappings of faith.”

Quote by Emily Temple

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Emily Temple

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“In later life I have been sometimes praised, sometimes mocked, for my way of pointing out the mythical elements that seem to me to underlie our apparently ordinary lives. Certainly that cast of mind had some of its origin in our pit, which had much the character of a Protestant Hell. I was probably the most entranced listener to a sermon the Reverend Andrew Bowyer preached about Gehenna, the hateful valley outside the walls of Jerusalem, where outcasts lived, and where their flickering fires, seen from the city walls, may have given rise to the idea of a hell of perpetual burning. He liked to make his hearers jump, now and then, and he said that our gravel pit was much the same sort of place as Gehenna. My elders thought this far-fetched, but I saw no reason then why hell should not have, so to speak, visible branch establishments throughout the earth, and I have visited quite a few of them since.”

“But most of all, I remember space. I remember doing nothing, but doing it together, which made it something after all. Now when I put a dish in the microwave for 30 seconds, I am paralyzed by the discomfort of unorganized time. Is 30 seconds enough to read something, check the weather, pee? I reach for anything to occupy me. But now I've spent all of my time wondering how I should spend it. And the machine beeps and I have purpose again.”