I find there are certain places in the world that a body can be totally comfortable and at home in and one such place for me is a book shop. I feel very at ease and happy as a little clam when I'm surrounded by books and especially books that beg me to discover them. And when it happens to be one of the nine anglo bookshops in Paris, one that originally started as a library in the 1920s, where Hemingway often went to borrow books and money. Shakespeare and Company. How do I love thee? No but really. I could sit and read and write and read some more in this place. I'm thinking of creating a special Shakespeare and Company room in my future maison.
I mean come on people. Stop it. Words allude. I think when I saw this study area I might have sighed audibly, the sigh of a thousand short stories and maybe a novel to be written and hundreds of leatherbounds to be smelt and soaked in.

A hideout of books. A hide out of books! Oh heaven help me, a hideout of books.

And then there was this cranny made of cupboard doors. It was a little shelter a petit croin for writing hopes and poetries and sillinesses on a typrewriter. I sat down on the creaky little seat and grazed my fingers on the keys. I wonder how long it had been there, who had typed and then I knew my writer's heart wanted this petit croin de la monde pour toute ma vie.
Other people felt inspired by the faded persian carpet hanging on the back wall of the croin and the twinkle lights above and they left messages. French, English, German, Arabic.

So I couldn't resist.

For my favorite Company always.

Signed C. Cotten.