“The acquisition of knowledge from books provides an experience different from the Internet. Reading is relatively time-consuming; to ease the process, style is important. Because it is not possible to read all books on a given subject, much less the totality of all books, or to organize easily everything one has read, learning from books places a premium on conceptual thinking”
“His winsome grin sends a thrill up my spine, a lit fuse shortening by the second, and I have no idea what happens when it burns to the end.””
“One passes imperceptibly from one scene, one age, one life to another. Suddenly, walking down the street, be it real or be it a dream, one realizes for the first time that the years have flown, that all this has passed forever and will live on only in memory; and then the memory turns inward with a strange, clutching brilliance and one goes over these scenes and incidents perpetually, in dream and reverie, while walking a street, while lying with a woman, while reading a book, while talking to a stranger . . . suddenly, but always with terrific insistence and always with terrific accuracy, these memories intrude, rise up like ghosts and permeate every fiber of one's being. Hencefoward everything moves on shifting levels”
“Prunella had also learned, and then forgotten, that, as well as being ingenious, fish were incredibly progressive. Take, for example, the male seahorse, which shouldered the responsibility for giving birth. However, if that wasn’t impressive enough, some fish didn’t just believe in gender equality, they took it a step further and believed in male inequality. Take, for example, the anglerfish. The young, male anglerfish, which was significantly smaller than its female counterpart, would swim around the ocean until it came across a girl anglerfish, which it would latch onto with its very sharp teeth. Over time, the male would physically fuse with the female, connecting to her skin and her bloodstream, and dispensing of its eyes and internal organs in the process. The only thing the male anglerfish did hold onto was its testes. Prunella reasoned there were some things that boys would simply never give up.””
Henry FuseliHenry Fuseli was a Swiss painter and draughtsman who became a prominent figure in the British art scene during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Known for his dramatic and often supernatural the...