Seeing one's books on the shelf tells you so much about the way somebody has, over the years, put together their private library, which is a reflection of their minds and their selves.

The journey is not linear, it is always back and forth, denying the calendar, the wrinkles and lines of the body.

If you continually write and read yourself as a fiction, you can change what's crushing you.

Are we all living like this? Two lives, the ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets?

One of the problems with watching TV is that you've got a fairly low level of language operating all the time. Quite a small vocabulary and really no conceptual or abstract thinking. That's an issue. If you've got a wide vocabulary, you can learn. The complexities of grammar, in themselves, force you to think about time in a particular way. Force you to widen your outlook on the world.

Do it from the heart or not at all.

In a world where meaning is often absent or imposed, reading offers a dialogue with ourselves, with society, with history, and with the dead.