Too much plot shows too little respect for one’s audience, and too little shows too much.
Dec 202013
Reading
The dead alive and busy.
—Vaughan
Dec 102013
Many books are least likely to be read by the people who would profit most by reading them.
Nov 272013
Only the very cruellest novelists reproduce dialogue accurately.
Nov 252013
If you want to keep a secret, put it in the middle of a long book.
Sep 252013
Read to be contradicted.
Aug 272013
I have never known anyone book-smart, but book-stupid I see every day.
Aug 212013
Read a lot: think some: write a little.
Jul 192013
Reading old books leavens our fashionable prejudices with a few unfashionable ones.
Jul 152013
Unbending virtue dies on the page. Bores, prigs, hypocrites, blowhards, martinets — these are the glories of world literature.
Jul 052013
You stir up a lot of sunken knowledge when you reorganize your library.