To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.

You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.

We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.

To begin with, it's true, she read with trepidation and some unease. The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.

Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.

Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion. You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom. You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.

God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, "Can I be excused the Crucifixion?" No!