F.R. Leavis's "eat up your broccoli" approach to fiction emphasises this junkfood/wholefood dichotomy. If reading a novel--for theeighteenth century reader, the most frivolous of diversions--did not, by the middle of the twentieth century, make you a better person in some way, then you might as well flush the offending volume down the toilet, which was by far the best place for the undigested excreta of dubious nourishment.

It shone on everyone, whether they had a contract or not. The most democratic thing I'd ever seen, that California sunshine.

A fairy tale is the kind of story in which one king goes to another king to borrow a cup of sugar

Nothing is a matter of life and death except life and death.

Soon, nostalgia will be another name for Europe.

I desire therefore I exist.

Proposition one: time is a man, space is a woman.