Literature gives us an internal compass, a way to negotiate all life’s rough and tumble. It gives us insight, empathy, direction and warning. It is a concordance for the physical world, a magnificent prism through which reality is refracted. Much loved passages whisper in our ears. Long-dead authors hold us by the hand. Half-forgotten poems fill our mouths. Literature is present at the birth of our first child and the ordering of our morning coffee. It fills us.