Secondhand Knowledge Quotes

“Few things were more tantalising to Mira than when she missed out on an interesting argument only to hear it summarised badly—or too briefly—after the fact. She hated having to rely on someone else’s version of events, for she was much too proud of her own powers of discernment ever to accept another person’s judgment over whose ideas had been valid, whose logic convincing, and whose rhetoric fair; still more infuriating was the thought that an interesting argument could have taken place without her, for she was long accustomed to being thought the liveliest and most original thinker of any company in which she found herself, and she had met few people in her life whom she honestly admired and envied when it came to the art—the many arts—of conversation.”
― Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood