In Victor Hugo’s epic novel Notre Dame de Paris, La Esmeralda provides us with what I think is one of the most succinct and beautiful definitions of friendship—and love—in modern literature. At this point in Hugo’s gothic tale, the 16-year-old vagrant is being condescendingly questioned by a potential suitor, Pierre Gringoire (incidentally also her husband, …
I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it …
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” -Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (1817).
welcome to the humble beginnings of my blog. You can find out a little more about the blog in the about section. I’ll be posting book reviews and literary minded rants shortly, but until than, enjoy a fabulous and favourite bookish quote of mine by Cervantes: …[H]e became so absorbed in his books that he …
