This 1928 treatise is strange and, at times, hard to follow, but Riding’s musings remain remarkably fresh. A few quick hits, to give you an idea of some of her arguments -- for instance, on writing and the blank slate:
“... literature is preferable to experience, since it is for the most part the closest one can get to nothing.”
Or, on precision in wordsmithing:
“Language is a form of laziness; the word is a compromise between what is possible to express and what is not possible to express. ... Prose is the mathematics of expression. ... Prose evades this problem [of communication] by making slovenly equations which always seem successful because, being inexact, they conceal inexactness."
She also has a renegade, take-no-prisoners view on matters of the heart:
"Love is simply a matter of history, beginning like cancer from small incidents. There is nothing further to be said about it."
Nothing further, then? I guess we’re dismissed.