Here I Sit, Alone At 60, Bald

The Appeal Of Reading, She Thought, Lay In Its Indifference: There Was Something Undeferring About Literature. Books Did Not Care Who Was Reading Them Or Whether One Read Them Or Not. All Readers Were Equal, Herself Included. Literature, She Thought, Is A Commonwealth; Letters A Republic.

It's The One Species I Wouldn't Mind Seeing Vanish From The Face Of The Earth. I Wish They Were Like The White Rhinosix Of Them Left In The Serengeti National Park, And All Males.

Books Are Not About Passing The Time. They're About Other Lives. Other Worlds.

Philip Larkin Used To Cheer Himself Up By Looking In The Mirror And Saying The Line From Rebecca, 'i Am Mrs De Winter Now!

Why Do We Not Care To Acknowledge Them? The Cattle, The Body Count. We Still Don't Like To Admit The War Was Even Partly Our Fault Because So Many Of Our People Died. A Photograph On Every Mantlepiece. And All This Mourning Has Veiled The Truth. It's Not So Much Lest We Forget, As Lest We Remember. Because You Should Realise The Cenotaph And The Last Post And All That Stuff Is Concerned, There's No Better Way Of Forgetting Something Than By Commemorating It.