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Reading is a possession, a march toward a possession. It has many degrees of eroticism. It can be a caress or a complete intercourse. In each of my separate books, and in each different part of each book, I want to constantly add to the image that my reader has of me. That is like being a good lover, that is definitely an erotic relationship. And of course there is always something sadistic in the relationship between writer and reader... I constantly play cat and mouse with the reader, letting the reader briefly enjoy the illusion that he's free for a little while, that he's in control. And then I quickly take the rug out from under him; he realizes with a shock that he's not in control, that it is always I , Calvino who is in total control of the situation.

NY Times book review June 21, 1981 p23 interview with Plesai Grey

In short, his mistress had discovered at last a discovery which Charles himself never made - what a discrepancy lay between the characters of His Majesty of England and

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the man, Charles Stuart. Barbara, coolly charting the depths of this chimerical sea, found to her everlasting enrichment that its waters were distinctly navigable. So the next few years she devoted to making quick crossings from one side to the other, preserving her reverence for the crown and the scepter and their pendent emoluments at one post, and at the other patting Charles on the head with excellent good humour, and a deal of affectionate tolerance for his incompetence

p.102 The Great Lady, Brabara Villers Mistress of Charles II by Margaret Gilmour - Knopf 1941

The French, always a rational people in what regards the emotions and a romantic people where their romance costs them nothing...

p163

July 10, 1981

People are so much easier to deal with, when their own lives are disturbed. We have to watch for the time and take advantage of it. p.195

Isy Compton-Burnett - 1933 More Woman than Men