All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I'd got somewhere, then I found I had to go on.

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.

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

Why is it always the "intelligent" people who are socialists?

I don't talk very well. With writing, you've time to get it right. Also I've found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn't write no one would want me to talk anyway.

Had your forefathers, Wigglesworth, been as stupid as you are, the human race would never have succeeded in procreating itself.

Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.