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There are books that speak to us of our own lives with a clarity we cannot match. They prevent the morose suspicion that we do not fully belong to the...more

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A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.

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It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an i...more

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It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we should begin to be concerned, for this may be the ...more

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The core – and perhaps unexpected – thing that books do for us is simplify. It sounds odd, because we think of literature as sophisticated. But there ...more

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One cannot read a novel without ascribing to the heroine the traits of the one we love.

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It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand of skeptical complaint against...more

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In literature, too, we admire prose in which a small and astutely arranged set of words has been constructed to carry a large consignment of ideas. 'W...more