Adulation of our imaginary virtues, despite all the evidence to the contrary, continues to be one of the oddest things about this county.
-Charles Simic
Conversation
What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods . . . A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
―Franz Kafka

