A Room with a View by E.M Forster is one of my favourite novels. (You’ll find it on the list of “Novels I Wish I’d Written.”) I don’t know how many times I’ve read it or listened to the audiobook — at this point it must be the familiarity rather than the story that’s a comfort to me, like a favourite hoodie.

When I traveled to Europe with my brother when I was nineteen I made sure that we spent a few days in Florence and tracked down some of the places mentioned in the book; I remember Santa Croce in particular, the huge church that’s compared to a barn by the main character, Lucy Honeychurch. Another memory I have of Italy is witnessing a man pounding on a car; the driver got out to fight him and I thought ‘Italians really are as violent as they are in books!’

Enough reminiscing.

Here are some quotations from A Room with a View. I hope they’ll intrigue you enough that you’ll pick up a copy!

“Take an old man’s word; there’s nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror – on the things that I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware of muddle.”

“No, he is not tactful, yet have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet, at the same time, beautiful?”

“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm – yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.”

“Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.”

“This solitude oppressed her; she was accustomed to have her thoughts confirmed by others or, at all events, contradicted; it was too dreadful not to know whether she was thinking right or wrong.”

“She disliked confidences, for they might lead to self-knowledge and to that king of terrors—Light.”

“Then the pernicious charm of Italy worked on her, and, instead of acquiring information, she began to be happy.”

“If high ideals make a young man rude, the sooner he gets rid of them the better,”

“Secrecy has this disadvantage: we lose the sense of proportion; we cannot tell whether our secret is important or not.”

Now that I think about it, I haven’t read A Room with a View in a few years… time to pick it up again!

And a question for you, what’s your comfort novel?

(If you’ve read the book, you’ll understand why I chose the featured image. Credit: Andrew Ridley on Unsplash)