Read to remember, write to forget.
Feb 282013
The dead alive and busy.
—Vaughan
Read to remember, write to forget.
It takes half a lifetime to learn to read slowly.
Cows chew cud, people read newspapers.
In hell you are forced to reread continuously all the books you loved when you were twenty.
Everyone who used to read is now too busy writing.
The reliable narrator is a literary convention.
Asking a native to recommend a translation is like asking a local to recommend a hotel.
Fiction is like sugar — healthful when scarce, toxic in the great gobs in which we actually ingest it.
The self-justifying utterances of murderers, thieves, cowards, blowhards, and madmen all enter the quote books under Shakespeare.
When reading fiction, ask which of the villains you resemble.