“The eighteenth-century polymath Thomas Young was the last person to have read all the books published in his lifetime. That means that he would've read all the Shakespeare and all the Greek and Roman classics and all the theology and all the philosophy and all the science. But the same man today, a man who had read all the books published today, would've had to've read all Dan Brown's novels, two volumes of Chris Moyles' autobiography, The World According to Clarkson by Jeremy Clarkson, The World according to Clarkson II by Jeremy Clarkson, The World according to Clarkson III by Jeremy Clarkson… his mind would be awash with bad metaphors and unsustainable, reactionary opinion; one long anecdote about the time that Comedy Dave put a pound coin in the urinal. In short, the man who had read everything published today would be more stupid than a man who had read nothing. That's not a good state of affairs.”

Series 1 Episode 1: "Toilet Books"

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Stewart Lee9

English stand-up comedian, writer, director and musician 1968

Menachem Mendel of Kotzk (1787–1859) Polish rabbi

As quoted in Triumph of Survival : The Story of the Jews in the Modern Era 1650-1995‎ (1993) by Berel Wein, p. 96

“Any writer, reading over the typescript of a book for the last time before sending it off to the publisher, must wonder what all the effort was for.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

"Introduction" http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/autobio/1.htm <br class="br">An Autobiographical Novel (1991) <br class="br">Context: Any writer, reading over the typescript of a book for the last time before sending it off to the publisher, must wonder what all the effort was for. An autobiography is specially in need of justification to its author. It is a work of self-justification which itself needs justifying. Why have I written this book? Why have I written it the way I have? What does it mean to me? What do I hope it will mean to others?<br>Each human being has at the final core of self a crystal from which the whole manifold of the personality develops, a secret molecular lattice which governs the unfolding of all the structures of the individuality, in time, in space, in memory, in action and contemplation. Asleep there were just these dreams and no others. Awake there were these actions only. Only these deeds came into being.