{"author":"Connie Willis","author_id":"Connie+Willis","total_quotes":25,"quotes":[{"text":"Eureka!'s like the one Archimedes had when he stepped in a bathtub and suddenly realized the answer to the problem of testing metals' density are few and far between, and mostly it's just trying and failing and trying something else, feeding in data and eliminating variables and staring at the results, trying to figure out where you went wrong.","author":"Connie Willis","tags":["eureka-moments","science"],"id":5699,"author_id":"Connie+Willis"},{"text":"And every place and time an author writes about is imaginary, from Oz to Raymond Chandler's L.A. To Dickens's London.","author":"Connie Willis","tags":["writing"],"id":20448,"author_id":"Connie+Willis"},{"text":"...Then inn a conversational tone said, 'I slapped my Aunt Martha. When my fiancé died. She told me God needed him in heaven, and I hauled off and slapped her, a sixty year old woman....People say unbelievable things to you. They deserve slapping.","author":"Connie Willis","tags":["anger","death","outrage","slapping"],"id":29935,"author_id":"Connie+Willis"},{"text":"One of the nastier trends in library management in recent years is the notion that libraries should be 'responsive to their patrons'.","author":"Connie Willis","tags":["humor","libraries"],"id":34215,"author_id":"Connie+Willis"},{"text":"Management cares about only one thing. Paperwork. They will forgive almost anything else - cost overruns, gross incompetence, criminal indictments - as long as the paperwork's filled out properly. And in on time.","author":"Connie Willis","tags":["incompetence","management","paperwork"],"id":37001,"author_id":"Connie+Willis"},{"text":"Come here, cat. You wouldn’t want to destroy the space-time continuum, would you? Meow. Meow.","author":"Connie Willis","tags":["cats","funny","time-travel"],"id":58065,"author_id":"Connie+Willis"},{"text":"She had been wrong in thinking Christ had been called up against his will to fight in a war. He didn't look - in spite of the crown of thorns - like someone making a sacrifice. Or even like someone determined to 'do his bit'. He looked instead like Marjorie had looked telling Polly she'd joined the Nursing Service, like Mr Humphreys had looked filling buckets with water and sand to save Saint Paul's, like Miss Laburnum had looked that day she came to Townsend Brothers with the coats. He looked like Captain Faulknor must have looked, lashing the ships together. Like Ernest Shackleton, setting out in that tiny boat across icy seas. Like Colin helping Mr Dunworthy across the wreckage.He looked ... Contented. As if he was where he wanted to be, doing what he wanted. ","author":"Connie Willis","tags":["love","sacrifice"],"id":100815,"author_id":"Connie+Willis"},{"text":"Don't they know science doesn't work like that? You can't just order scientific breakthroughs. They happen when you are looking at something you've been working on for years and suddenly see a connection you never noticed before, or when you're looking for something else altogether. Sometimes they even happen by accident. Don't they know you can't get a scientific breakthrough just because you want one?","author":"Connie Willis","tags":["breakthrough","science"],"id":133001,"author_id":"Connie+Willis"},{"text":"Cats, as you know, are quite impervious to threats.","author":"Connie Willis","tags":["cats"],"id":151481,"author_id":"Connie+Willis"},{"text":"Why do only the awful things become fads? I thought. Eye-rolling and Barbie and bread pudding. Why never chocolate cheesecake or thinking for yourself?","author":"Connie Willis","tags":["barbie","bellwether","fads","humour","independence"],"id":165956,"author_id":"Connie+Willis"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":25,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}