If men's standing in the world could be toppled by an ill-advised choice of hat, English literature would be dramatically changed

There is true art in it, this command of tea and dinner tables; this animating correctness. Men may congratulate themselves for writing truly and passionately about the movements of nations; they may consider war and the search for God to be great literature's only subjects; but if men's standing in the world could be toppled by an ill-advised choice of hat, English literature would be dramatically changed

M. Cunningham, The Hours (1998), 83-84