Youth is a clearer witness to the world.

So much to relish and remember.

We are not merely tempered and schooled by failure but compelled, in however subtle a fashion, to become something other than we were.

I do have one very brutal writing ritual. If I’m working in the morning, I don’t allow myself a cup of tea until I’ve written two paragraphs. It’s harsh.

The obvious precedent for Beijing 2008 was the Berlin Olympics, in 1936. Both were showcases for a muscle-flexing nation, although Hitler made an elementary error when he chose not to dress his young National Socialists in lime-green catsuits laced with twinkling fairy lights.

Children, viewed from one angle, are philosophy in motion.

We happen upon ourselves when nothing much happens to us, and we are transformed in the process.

That is why the ideal literary diet consists of trash and classics; all that has survived, and all that has no reason to survive – books you can read without thinking, and books you have to read if you want to think at all.

The general opinion of Revenge of the Sith seems to be that it marks a distinct improvement on the last two episodes, The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. True, but only in the same way that dying from natural causes is preferable to crucifixion.

No new reader, however charitable, could open “Fifty Shades of Grey,” browse a few paragraphs, and reasonably conclude that the author was writing in her first language, or even her fourth.