I’ve heard it said that if you are not nervous before going on stage, if you do not feel butterflies in your stomach, your hands jitter and your voice shakes, you have not understood the power of performance, the pleasure of standing before others and creating, and whatever it is that you present will, asRead more
There are so many quotations I could use about a house not being a home without books, about how important literature and the access to books has been to one or another person of note, or fame, spanning countless years. Man has appreciated the written or illustrated thought since the first drawings appeared on caveRead more
I’ve had my suspicions for quite a while, but it is something almost impossible to prove unless I take a deckchair and place myself, cup of coffee in the one hand and a book in the other, directly in front of my house and watch what happens. The theory is that our small post box,Read more
In her introduction to Pliny’s Letters, published in 1969, Betty Radice notes that Gaius Plinius Luci filius Caecilius Secundus (Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, son of Lucius of the tribe Oufentina, better known to us as Pliny the Younger) followed the principle of a single theme for his letters rather than the scholastic Rule of ThreeRead more
I sometimes get to the end of a page or a paragraph and have the niggling feeling that there is nothing more to be said, that everything worthwhile has been written – not necessarily by me, but over many centuries – and everything which follows is mere repetition. Perhaps there really is nothing new underRead more
