Take a newspaper account of Waterloo or Trafalgar, with all the small advertisements: it seems much more real than reading about it in a history book.

There's so much more to a book than just the reading.

إن جرائد الصباح تثير أعصابى...هذا صحيح.و لكن لا مانع عندى أن تثور كل يوم.إنها جهزت و أعدت لهذا الغرض وحده,لأن تتوتر,و تثور,و تتحفز,و تتوثب..تنتبه.

I have 60 years of reading to draw upon: naval memoirs, dispatches, the Naval Chronicles, family letters.

Since I grew up, I have never deliberately used any technique at all other than the physical shaping of my tale so that it more or less resembles what has been thought of as a novel for these last two hundred years.

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.