If there was an elephant in the supermarket, she'd either not see it at all, or call it Mrs Jones and talk about fishcakes.

A community narrows down and grows dreadful ignorant when it is shut up to its own affairs, and gets no knowledge of the outside world except from a cheap, unprincipled paper.

Look at all that rubbish," she said, watching the electric van slowly whirr from bin to bin, little men in gloves removing it all.
"They're taking it away," I said.
"Where to?" she said. "It just gets moved around dearie, that's all.

There is always a city. There is always a civilisation. There is always a barbarian with a pickaxe. Sometimes you are the city, sometimes you are the civilisation, but to become that city, that civilisation, you once took a pickaxe and destroyed what you hated, and what you hated was what you did not understand.

Narrow-mindedness will only get you as far as Nowhere, and once you're there, you're lost forever.

The most learned are often the most narrow minded.