It Was So Much Easier To Be

For Just One Second, Look At Your Life And See How Perfect It Is. Stop Looking For The Next Secret Door That Is Going To Lead You To Your Real Life. Stop Waiting. This Is It: There's Nothing Else. It's Here, And You'd Better Decide To Enjoy It Or You're Going To Be Miserable Wherever You Go, For The Rest Of Your Life, Forever.

The Idea Of Some Kind Of Objectively Constant, Universal Literary Value Is Seductive. It Feels Real. It Feels Like A Stone Cold Fact That In Search Of Lost Time, By Marcel Proust, Is Better Than A Shore Thing, By Snooki. And It May Be; Snooki Definitely Has More One-star Reviews On Amazon. But If Literary Value Is Real, No One Seems To Be Able To Locate It Or Define It Very Well. We're Increasingly Adrift In A Grey Void Of Aesthetic Relativism.

People - Me Included - Want To Get Excited About Books. Good Books Are A Good Thing.

The Paradox Of The English Country House Is That Its State Of Permanent Decline, The Fact That Its Heyday Is Always Behind It, Is Part Of The Seduction, Just As It Is Part Of The Seduction Of Books In General.

Being Brave Was Easy When You Would Rather Die Than Give Up.