Big Clive

 In the forty years it took me to write this book, I only gradually realized that the finished work, if it were going to be true to the pattern of my experience, would have no pattern. It would be organized like the top of my desk, from which the last assistant I hired to sort it out has yet to reappear. The book I wanted to write had its origins in the books I was reading. Several times, in my early days, I had to sell my best books to buy food, so I never underlined anything. When conditions improved I became less fastidious. Not long after I began marking passages for future consideration, I also began keeping notes in the margin beside the markings, and then longer notes on the endpapers. Those were the very means by which Montaigne invented the modern essay; and at first I must have had an essay of my own in mind: a long essay; but one with the usual shape, a single line of argument moving through selected perceptions to a neat conclusion.

- From Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts by Clive James