April 12

If the conceit is true, that the most vocal homophobes are shouting down their hidden natures, what does it say about me that I so readily declare other people morons?

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With the e-book, reading is reduced to a single artefact through which the text passes like a spirit through a medium. Thus the book loses its corporeal existence and literature enters the age of ghosts.

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I read that Michel Leiris, in a book called Manhood, compared writing to bullfighting, for the courage required of the participants. This is priceless. The only thing in common between the torero and the writer is the word ‘bull’.

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Don’t be too hard on yourself. There’s a whole universe for that.

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I have a head for books and factoids, with too little space left over for life. E, on the other hand, remembers everything. She contemplates in retrospect a furrowed field, while I look back upon trees in fog.

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The aphorist must peep through cracks. To see things whole would shame us into silence.

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Do politicians speak like politicians at home? “My policy of fidelity towards you, my darling, is aspirational rather than a target...”

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If at first you don’t succeed, get a man in.