“I fly above books,” she responded somberly, “as I would have flown above life, if a life had been granted to me. I once read of a flower whose calyx was dusted with a sweet, salutary pollen at the top, and a bitter, poisonous kind at the bottom; butterflies that lit there too often, died. So it is with everything; so it is with life. I read neither to learn nor to think – I abhor works or morality and metaphysics – I read to forget, to acquaint myself with joys that the world dispenses to the happy, and to delight in their echo, as it were. The only joy I take in my existence: flight from reality, oblivion, dream. You understand,” she added with an air full of grim irony, “my need to cling to this system, you need only look at me.” —Fosca by Ignio Ugo Tarchetti, translated by Lawrence Venuti

