I was on a walking tour of Oxford colleges once with a group of bored and unimpressive tourists. They yawned at Billion's quad, T.E. Lawrence's and Churchill's portraits, and the blackboard Einstein wrote his E=mc2 on. Then the tour guide said, 'And this is the Bridge of Sighs, where Lord Peter proposed (in Latin) to Harriet,' and everyone suddenly came to life and began snapping pictures. Such is the power of books.

— Connie Willis

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.

— Connie Willis

Management is proving beyond a shadow of a doubt they don't have enough to do," she murmured back. "So they've invented a new acronym.

— Connie Willis

Maybe the conference was an inversion layer of another kind, bringing me face-to-face with old friends and old places. With cancer and the Gap and the Old Man, railing about newfangled players and spicy food. Bringing me face-to-face early with death and old age and change.

— Connie Willis

One of the nastier trends in library management in recent years is the notion that libraries should be 'responsive to their patrons'.

— Connie Willis

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 Faulkner must have looked, lashing the ships together. Like Ernest Shackleton, setting out in that tiny boat across icy seas. Like Colin helping Mr Unworthy across the wreckage. He looked ... contented. As if he was where he wanted to be, doing what he wanted

— Connie Willis

That's what literature is. It's the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them!

— Connie Willis

That's what the movies do. They don't entertain us, they don't send the message: 'We care.' They give us lines to say, they assign us parts: John Wayne, Theta Bar, Shirley Temple, take your pick.

— Connie Willis

...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.

— Connie Willis

To do something for someone or something you loved-England or Shakespeare or a dog or the Hobbins or history-wasn't a sacrifice at all. Even if it cost you your freedom, your life, your youth.

— Connie Willis