I could not help it; the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes. Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of the third story, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and solitude of the spot...

JANE EYRE/CHARLOTTE BRONTE

les femmes, qui rêvent

the reader

☼

On July 11 1942 Irène Némirovsky wrote in her notebook: 

"The pine trees all around me. I am sitting on my blue cardigan in the middle of an ocean of leaves, wet and rotting from last night's storm, as if I were on a raft, my legs rucked under me! In my bag, I have put Volume II of Anna Karenina, the diary of Katherine Mansfield and an orange. My friends the bumblebees, delightful insects, seem pleased with themselves and their buzzing is profound and grave. I like low, serious tones on voices and in nature ... In a moment or so I will try to find the hidden lake."

 “How disturbing it is that our illusions 

are often our most important beliefs.”

HANIF KUREISHI