The typical academic bibliography buries the three books the author has plagiarized among hundreds that he has scarcely opened.
Aug 222022
Reading
The dead alive and busy.
—Vaughan
Aug 052022
I always inspect what people read in public, but guiltily, the way boys look up skirts from under the bleachers.
Apr 082022
The desires to have one’s work understood, and oneself understood, are nearly opposite, and ought not to share a verb.
Feb 282022
We have always believed what we read, and now we can read what we believe.
Feb 072022
A few books, like Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson and certain novels by Wodehouse, are unglossable, complete and perfect in themselves. They may succeed with the public but never with the critics, who before them feel their own irrelevance too acutely.
Jan 182022
A reader more intelligent than the writer will read more than the writer intended, a reader less intelligent will read less, and a reader equally intelligent will read something entirely different.
Jan 102022
An aphorism should look wrong to half its readers and obvious to the other half.
Nov 112021
School inculcates the bad habit of finishing books, as if they were assignments.
Oct 202021
To fall out of love with a writer is the first step toward understanding him.
Oct 152021
The Zeitgeist is everywhere, but especially in bad books.