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Quote by Lucy Ellmann

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Ducks, Newburyport

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Author

Lucy Ellmann
Lucy Ellmann

Lucy Ellmann is a renowned British novelist born on October 18, 1956, in England. Her works are known for their unique narrative style and profound psychological insights, which have won her a dedicated following. more

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“The American Naming Authority, a collective of women studying the effects of names on behavior, decrees that a name should only have one user. The nearly 1 million American users of the name Mary, for example, do not constitute a unified army who might slaughter all users of the name Nancy, as was earlier supposed, but rather a saturation of the Mary Potential Quotient. Simply stated: Too many women with the same name produces widespread mediocrity and fatigue.”

NamesLanguageLabelsCategoriesMediocrityOriginalityNaming
Book:Notable American Women
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“Classification may very well not be useless, but it is never analysis, no matter how baroquely detailed and comprehensive-seeming its categories. At best, it begs questions. At worst it is presumptuous and totalitarian, replacing understanding with filing. We have all heard papers where categories are the driving force, according to which the way we understand literature (or whatever) is to work out what title fits where, as if literary theory was a giant card-catalog. Even when the last book has been slotted neatly into the last of the holes that were cut to be filled with books, what we have are books in neat piles. Which is not nothing, but neither is it that much.”

CategoriesTaxonomyLiterary Analysis
Author:China Miéville
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“Nutmeg." Claudia grabbed the bottle and screwed the cap back on. The story was still filtering through me when a new scent exploded forth. "Orris root," Claudia said, tapping the new bottle on the table. "Am I going too fast for you?" "No," I lied. "Good." Linden blossom. Tonka bean. Benzoin. The smells came at me, little glass missiles fired across the table in rapid succession. "The point is speed and precision," Claudia said. She pushed a stack of papers toward me, the pages divided into rows and columns. "Put each scent in a category. Fresh, floral, woody, spicy, animal, marine, fruity. You need to recognize them instantly, without thinking." The bottles started again, and the world turned into charts and rows, filled with an onslaught of strange names. Litsea cubeba. Frangipani. Neroli. Tagette. Orange broke into pieces, became pettigrain, bergamot, tangerine, mandarin, bitter, sweet, and blood. Pepper was black, green, or pink. Mint was winter, spear, or pepper.”

CategoriesScentsPerfumesAromas
Book:The Scent Keeper
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“By the end of the day, I'd reached the point where I could sense the category of a scent almost before the bottle was open. Fresh was quick and cool, never warm. Floral was soft and seductive, the kind that kept its clothes on, showing only an ankle or a shoulder. Spicy bit your nose, woke you up. Woody sent me to the island so fast I couldn't stop the tears from filling my eyes. I couldn't wait to start combining them, creating something new. Victoria was right- this was a language, my language, and I wanted to write.”

LanguageCategoriesScents
Book:The Scent Keeper
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