Isola doesn't approve of small talk and believes in breaking the ice by stomping on it.

Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true.

I believe I am becoming pathetic. I'll go further, I believe that I am in love with a flower-growing, wood-carving quarryman/carpenter/pig farmer. In fact, I know I am. Perhaps tomorrow I will become entirely miserable at the thought that he doesn't love me back - may, even, care for Remy- but at this precise moment I am succumbing to euphoria. My head and stomach feel quite odd.

I am to cover the philosophical side of the debate and so far my only thought is that reading keeps you from going gaga.

Reading keeps you from going ga-ga.

He had no imagination either-fatal for one engaged in child-rearing

Your questions regarding that gentleman are very delicate, very subtle, very much like being smacked in the head with a mallet...it's a tuba among the flutes.