Someone who gets me

A museumgoer when I have nothing better to do, I avoid writing much about collections, because a visitor should enter a museum innocent of what’s to come, be allowed to make discoveries, and not be nagged into seeing specific works.

Paul Theroux, On the Plain of Snakes

Trying vainly to connect

What she does convey—here and in all her novels—is that everything is problematic; and that the human condition consists of millions and millions of people being tossed up and down the earth, trying vainly to connect but being prevented from doing so.

Bruce Chatwin on Sybille Bedford in the introduction to her A Visit To Don Otavio