Jane Rogers

Jane Rogers (born July 21, 1952) is a British novelist, editor, scriptwriter, lecturer, and teacher.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb (2011)

 * Won the 2012 Arthur C. Clarke Award. All page numbers from the first US edition published by Harper Perennial


 * That’s almost like the daft things you believe when you’re really little, like I use to believe I could fly. I believed it for years, but it had to be kept secret. I knew if I ever told anyone or showed it off to anyone, I’d lose the power. And if I doubted it, and tried it out just to see, I’d lose the power — so I didn’t. I believed in it. I knew I would be able to fly when there really was a need. Which, fortunately for me, there never was.
 * Chapter 1 (p. 6)


 * I thought it was normal, that’s the thing. When you’re little you think everything is normal. If your mother had a pointed head and green ears you’d think it’s normal. Only when you grow up do you realise that not everybody is like that. Gradually you can even come to learn that the time you are living in is strange too, that it hasn’t always been like this. The more you feel uncomfortable and unconfident and want to find a way to be like everyone else and fit in, the more normality runs away from you because there isn’t any such thing. Or if there is, you have to find someone else who’ll agree with you what it is. Which I seem singularly unable to do.
 * Chapter 1 (pp. 6-7)


 * But naturally people fussed and objected like they always do when someone tries to do something positive.
 * Chapter 7 (p. 46)


 * Every other method of resolving this difference of opinion has failed. We are reduced to violence, which is the last resort.
 * Chapter 10 (p. 75)


 * “If you opt out, you don’t change anything.” “Why should I run round helping to get power for a group of idiots who’ll end up just as dangerous as the ones already in power?” You really don’t think anyone can make things better?” “No. What’s going to happen will happen.”
 * Chapter 18 (p. 137)


 * “Frankly Jess, on the grand scale—” “You can’t think on the grand scale. You have to think on the small scale. Otherwise no-one’d ever do anything.”
 * Chapter 18 (p. 137)