Writers can write nonsense without ill effect. It is when readers put up with, then expect, and finally demand it that civilization ends.
Reading
The dead alive and busy.
—Vaughan
There are ways to praise a book that discourage reading it.
If you believe the reviewers when they call you a genius, you will believe them when they call you a fool.
Where books are burned, they are taken seriously.
There is a special reverence for literature found only in those who have spent their whole lives watching television.
An unending series of plausible occurrences is impossible in life, and insisted on in fiction.
I can skip the one book I must read if I read only one book this year, having read more than one book this year.
The novel often triumphs as a lived experience and always fails as a recollected one.
To study ethics, read fiction, not philosophy.
It is not easy for a woman to win an author’s heart; she has to read his books.