My God...it can think.

I took to the Bodleian Library as to a lover and ... would sit long hours in Bodley's arms, to emerge, blinking and dazed with the smell and feel of all those books.

Do not neglect to bring your revolver, Russell. It may be needed, and it does us no good in your drawer with that disgusting cheese." "My lovely Stilton; it's almost ripe, too. I do hope Mr. Thomas enjoys it." "Any riper and it will eat through the woodwork and drop into the room below." "You envy me my educated tastes." "That I will not honour with a response. Get out the door, Russell.

Pride is a sweetmeat, to be savoured in small pieces; it makes for a poor feast.

That's what tears are for, you know, to wash away the fear and cool the hate.

Now, I'm as appreciative as the next obsessive-compulsive recovering-academic of the vast riches of material becoming available online, thanks to all those Google scanners crouched in the basements of libraries around the world, madly feeding books through their machines. I download obscure tomes onto my iPad and give thanks to the dual gods Gates and Jobs, singing hymns to all the lesser pantheon of geniuses. But there's nothing like a book.

Eccentricty had flowered into madness.