Andre Pawney

“That’s what winter is: an exercise in remembering how to still yourself then how to come pliantly back to life again.”
― Ali Smith, Winter

“But afterwards, is there nothing more for me in life - no true home - nothing to be dearer to me than myself?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“As it happened, I was no longer interested in literature as a form of snobbery or even self-definition. I had no desire to prove that one book was better than another; in fact, if I read something I admired, I found myself increasingly disinclined to mention it at all. What I knew personally to be true had come to seem unrelated to the process of persuading others. I did not, any longer, want to persuade anyone of anything.”
― Rachel Cusk, Outline

“I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette