Wicked Quotes: Claire Messud, Anthony Powell and William Shakespeare
I picked up a copy of Claire Messud’s novel The Emperor’s Children recently at the Great Glebe Garage Sale. It’s of interest not just because of the praise, but because it observes the hermetic literary life of New York, and oh, yes, the main character’s name is Thwaite 
The book is introduced with a quote from Anthony Powell, the gist of which he plainly nipped from Marcus Aurelius: "…if you bring off adequate preservation of your personal myth, nothing much else in life matters. It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them." Books Do Furnish a Room.
Marcus I think put it better with: The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.
or this variant: The universe is flux, life is opinion.
Powell is in good company. Here how the Bard pilfers: "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so".
Messud’s characters have been said to undergo a ‘growing away from mirth.’ Not so the reader. Apparently someone in the book drops a copy of David Foster Wallace’s "Infinite Jest" into the bathtub.
But back to Marcus, and a powerful argument in favour of the Canon:
Search men’s governing principles, and consider the wise, what they shun and what they cleave to.
And this inspiration:
Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; but if a thing is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.
Bill Clinton apparently kept a copy of The Meditations at his bedside.