I once belonged to a health club, where it cost me £2,000 a year to amble on a treadmill for half an hour a week and sit and read Grazia in the cooling-off area.

You cannot exercise and be amused about it. You cannot integrate the dying bug into your core workout and hold to the position that you are a spiritual being. In this way, the body and the mind are each other's opposite unto death, which is why you have to choose which of them you are going to follow.

Looking back, I realise it wasn't only gym I dreaded at school. Every class was a torment. It wasn't knowledge I objected to but instruction. Why couldn't they just tell us what books to read and leave us to get on and read them?

Howard Jacobson Quotes