As a pretentious teenager, I went through a phase of writing down my favourite quotes in a leather-trimmed marbleised notebook, which I’d been given one Christmas and felt far too special to fill with my own flimsy words. An eclectic collection of bon mots from the likes of Milan Kundera, William Blake, Tony Blair and, er, Sharon Stone, many of the quotes dramatically interrogate the thorny concept of an authentic life. ‘False face must hide what the false heart doth know,’ from Hamlet. ‘Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their
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