"MISS PRISM
(...) You must put away your diary, Cecily. I really don't see why you should keep a diary at all.
CECILY
I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my life. If I didn't write them down, I should probably forget all about them.
MISS PRISM
Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.
CECILY
Yes, but it usually chronicles the things that have never happened, and couldn't possibly have happened. I believe that Memory is responsible for nearly all the three-volume novels that Mudie sends us.
MISS PRISM
Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days.
CECILY
Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did not end happily? I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.
MISS PRISM
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means."
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
