Robertson Davies

"A pretty girl is like a melody," hummed Roger.
"Excuse me," said Cobbler, turning toward him, "but I must contradict you. A pretty girl is nothing of the kind. A melody, if it is any good, has a discernible logic; a pretty girl can exist without the faintest vestige of sense."

Robertson Davies
Tempest-Tost

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She herself was a victim of that lust for books which rages in the breast like a demon, and which cannot be stilled save by the frequent and plentiful acquisition of books. This passion is more common, and more powerful, than most people suppose. Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines -- not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master's call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality. Solly was in a measure a victim of this unscrupulous passion, but Freddy was wholly in the grip of it.

Robertson Davies
Tempest-Tost

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Many authors write like amateur blacksmiths making their first horseshoe; the clank of the anvil, the stench of the scorched leather apron, the sparks and the cursing are palpable, and this appeals to those who rank "sincerity" very high. Nabokov is more like a master swordsmith making a fine blade; nothing is amiss, nothing is too much, there is no fuss, and the finished product must be handled with great care, or it will cut you badly.

Robertson Davies
In a review of Nabokov's Lolita

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The professor who lectured on Shakespeare seemed to be entrapped in a grotesque, retrospective love affair with every one of Shakespeare's heroines. I think he even had a feeling that he could have made a respectable faculty wife out of Lady Macbeth.

Robertson Davies
Shakespeare over the Port

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Si encara no heu llegit Robertson Davies, llegiu-lo, llegiu-lo, llegiu-lo,.....