The Pillow Book

More time travel. I like the interpretation I read of it as a kind of medieval blog - an 11th century Japanese instagram.

The Heian women writers who are still praised are those who evolved and expressed the sombre sensibility later identified as aware, a feeling-tone in which responsiveness to the moving nature of the phenomenal world derives from a recognition of its transience. W

And I hate people who don’t close a door that they’ve opened to go in or out

Water drunk when you’ve woken in the night.

Everything that cries in the night is wonderful. With the exception, of course, of babies.

I thoroughly envy anyone – man, woman or priest – who has fine children

A tasteful house whose garden trees have been destroyed by fire. The pond is still there, but it’s now uncared for and thick with pond weed.

And it’s fun too to wonder how you’ll ever get through the narrow lane ahead, only to find as you approach it that it’s possible after all.

I never intended that it should be placed alongside other books and judged on a par with them.