"A book may not tell us exactly how to live our own lives, but our own lives can teach us how to read a book."

-From Here to Middlemarch

Mead is talking about reading Middlemarch as a stepmother, but I find this a great quote about the experience of reading Victorian novels as a gay man in the 21st century, when I sometimes struggle to see myself represented. There are so many truths and so much compassion for humanity in Middlemarch that it is so relevant and "urgent" as Mead says, even today and even to me, and I love how Mead values the reader's perspective in the experience of the text. More than valuing, she's saying look at your life, it can help you understand what this woman over a hundred years ago was saying about it.