Reading an author’s work for his life is like digging up a garden for manure.
Mar 132013
Reading
The dead alive and busy.
—Vaughan
Feb 282013
Read to remember, write to forget.
Jan 082013
It takes half a lifetime to learn to read slowly.
Dec 282012
Cows chew cud, people read newspapers.
Dec 272012
In hell you are forced to reread continuously all the books you loved when you were twenty.
Dec 192012
Everyone who used to read is now too busy writing.
Dec 122012
The reliable narrator is a literary convention.
Nov 272012
Asking a native to recommend a translation is like asking a local to recommend a hotel.
Nov 062012
Fiction is like sugar — healthful when scarce, toxic in the great gobs in which we actually ingest it.
Oct 262012
The self-justifying utterances of murderers, thieves, cowards, blowhards, and madmen all enter the quote books under Shakespeare.