"You're absolutely right. You do need to read them," his uncle said. "That's what it means to be civilized. Novels, history, philosophy, science — the lot. You expose yourself to as much as possible, you absorb it, you forget most of it, but along the way it's changed you."
And I loved this . . .
"But Marina felt there was a strange quiet around Danielle's words, a silence in the line; and she decided that Danielle was just saying she was happy because it seemed the thing to say, because not to say it would be egregious. Marina wasn't sure whether there was merit simply in the saying: maybe sometimes pretense was the best you could hope for."
— The Emperor's Children
Be Susan. 