Rebecca West on reading

Were it possible for us to wait for ourselves to come into the room, not many of us would find our hearts breaking into flower as we heard the door handle turn.

There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.

I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

Mark Twain1835–1910Quoting or paraphrasing a Professor Winchester in “Disappearance of Literature”, speech at the Nineteenth Century Club, New York, 20 November 1900, in Mark Twain’s Speeches (1910), ed. William Dean Howells, p. 194

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

Mark Twain1835–1910

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Benjamin Franklin1706–1790

• Writing