Great writers, I discovered, were not to be bowed down before and worshiped, but embraced and befriended. Their names resounded through history not because they had massive brows and thought deep incomprehensible thoughts, but because they opened windows in the mind, they put their arms round you and showed you think you always knew but never dared to believe. Even if their names were terrifyingly foreign and intellectual sounding, Dostoevsky, Baudelaire or Cavalry, they turned out to be charming and wonderful and quite unalarming after all.

The Library Book