Reading Is Untidy, Discursive And Perpetually Inviting.

If You Find Yourself Born In Barnsley And Then Set Your Sights On Being Virginia Woolf It Is Not Going To Be Roses All The Way.

Polly: Education With Socialists, It's Like Sex, All Right As Long As You Don't Have To Pay For It.

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.

Kafka Could Never Have Written As He Did Had He Lived In A House. His Writing Is That Of Someone Whose Whole Life Was Spent In Apartments, With Lifts, Stairwells, Muffled Voices Behind Closed Doors, And Sounds Through Walls. Put Him In A Nice Detached Villa And He'd Never Have Written A Word.

Those Who Have Known The Famous Are Publicly Debriefed Of Their Memories, Knowing As Their Own Dusk Falls That They Will Only Be Remembered For Remembering Someone Else.