"The problem is when you try to impose today's standards on people living back then. It's the politically correct thing to do, but it was a different era, a different country then."

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When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape – into different countries, mores, speech patterns – but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life’s subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic.

— Julian Barnes