Thought for the week

The number of people in the world who would ever dream of picking up a hitherto unfamiliar musical instrument and expecting to be able to play Mozart on it is presumably very small, so why is the number who think they can write a good novel without ever thinking or bothering to read up on the history, the theory or the techniques of novel-writing, or indeed without ever (apparently) having read a novel at all, so very very large?

This is a constant and undiminished source of astonishment.

Then again, a constant and undiminished capacity for astonishment is one of the paths to a happy, or at least a non-disappointed, middle age. So at least there's something in it for me.