"...she blasts us all — she blasts religious people who are acting poorly in the name of religion. She blasts writers who are pretending to say writing is important while only wanting to get published. She blasts all the ways we take shortcuts from meaningful experience, from looking at the world closely and truthfully. Reading her feels chiropractic — she drives to the core, to the big stuff, to the spine, and in this way, she's asking us, over and over, to be better."
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At one of our stops I was staring down upon a table, that was calling my name, and internalizing that age old debate, 'Do I need any more hand tools' vs. 'Can you have too many tools?' when my youngest daughter came up to me and said, 'Look Papa, a picture of your friend.' In her pudgy little hands was a magazine with a drawing of Gilbert on its cover. I gave her praise and a dime telling her to go buy it. And I bought a two foot wooden level.
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"I confess to indulging here in that 'third degree of horror,' as Hilaire Belloc puts it, which is 'writing about what other people have written about writing'! In this case it’s hard to resist. Reading, like food and drink, is best when it is a shared pleasure. While Belloc has left us essays on inumerable topics, for sheer fun I admit that I like nothing better than his discussion of other authors."
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"I would have remained ignorant if it weren't for books. G.K. Chesterton cajoled me to respect tradition as a way of 'giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors.' My ancestors, it turns out, are a lively bunch. I discovered them scattershot—Augustine's introspection, Eckhart's mysticism, Therese of Lisieux's humility, Benedict's organizational genius."
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