# Quote — Connie Willis, Fire Watch

> I would never save her. I looked at the woman mopping up the tea, and it came to me that I could not save her either. Enola or the cat or any of them, lost here in the endless stairways and cul-de-sacs of time. They were already dead a hundred years, past saving. The past is beyond saving. Surely that was the lesson the history department sent me all this way to learn. Well, fine, I’ve learned it. Can I go home now?

- Author: [Connie Willis](https://www.leafyquotes.com/connie-willis.md)
- Book: [Fire Watch](https://www.leafyquotes.com/connie-willis/fire-watch.md)
- Page: 34
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Connie_Willis#Fire_Watch_(1985)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/connie-willis/fire-watch/i-would-never

## More from this book

> A cage is a safe place as long as nobody has the key.

p. 161 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/connie-willis/fire-watch/a-cage-is-a-safe.md)

> He sorted all the mail into three piles of “for” and “against” and “wildly insane,” then threw all of them into the wastebasket.

p. 223 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/connie-willis/fire-watch/he-sorted-all.md)

> “Fifty-nine,” Mr. Mowen said. “That’s too many coincidences to just be a coincidence.”

p. 255 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/connie-willis/fire-watch/fifty-nine-mr-mowen.md)