Portal:Literature/Quotes/Week 19

Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren’t. I’m not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people’s lives, never your own.


 * Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot (1984) ch. 13