If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.

Of course my standards are out of date! That's why they're called standards.

But then books, as I'm sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action. Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already. You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated. A book, as it were, closes the book.

Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.

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.

I've never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.

The thing I think about is that once you've done it, you then start to think about what you're going to do next. It's much easier to follow something that's not been as successful as this.