On Literature

I still can't really type, so I'm going to post things I can just cut and paste from more interesting parts of the internet instead.

I think this might be the best summary of how I feel about books, ever:

... my books are part of me. For the first 19 years of my life, I didn't go out. All my formative experiences are on those shelves. They are me, I am them. They are the reason I have a vocabulary instead of childhood memories. Glasses instead of an adventurous spirit and heavily stamped passport. Incipient scoliosis instead of a varied sexual history. I did not gut them for knowledge and move on. I absorbed them in their entirety and carry them with me still. We are indistinguishable and indivisible. Sometimes, when no one is looking, I take down favourites and hug them.

(Lucy Mangan, The Guardian, 17th Jan 2008)