Margin note: Stein

A century of the ordinary is not the same as an ordinary century.

I have no idea where this sentence came from. It is in my notebook, underlined twice, in handwriting I recognise as mine. I have searched the essay and cannot find it. Either I misremembered it, or I wrote it myself and then forgot, which would be the more interesting possibility.

A commonplace book is full of these small hauntings. Sentences that may be quotations, or may be your own thoughts returning in a borrowed voice. The uncertainty is not a flaw. It is a kind of conversation.