“Off and on during my life, I have passed sleepless nights in making up lists of the dozen or so books a person might choose to take along if suddenly marooned on a desert island. This is a relatively easy game for serious readers: At least half the titles would be recognized classics — the Bible, Plato, Shakespeare, a good dictionary, that sort of thing. But occasionally I have made the challenge a little more difficult: "What if you could take just one book?"”

— Michael Dirda

Washington Post article [concerning Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists]: Arts & Living, 21 Oct 2007.

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Michael Dirda 3

American literary critic 1948

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