❝ There’s a certain pleasure of the life of the mind that cannot be denied. It’s true that you might be socially isolated because you’re in the library, at home, and so on, but you’re intensely alive. In fact, you’re much more alive than these folk walking these streets of New York in crowds. There’s no intellectual interrogation and questioning going on at all. But if you read, you know, John Ruskin or you read Mark Twain or Herman Melville, you almost have to throw the book against the wall because you’re almost so intensely alive that you need a break. ❞