The crisis is not that the press is distrusted: the press has always been distrusted. The crisis is that this has finally dawned on the press.
May 032022
Writing
If it had been your exact thought you would have used my exact words.
Apr 292022
The ability to devise a good story has nothing in common with the ability to write tolerable prose.
Apr 082022
The desires to have one’s work understood, and oneself understood, are nearly opposite, and ought not to share a verb.
Apr 042022
To publish one’s work is to send a grown child out into the world: henceforth it will have to fend for itself.
Mar 212022
The plagiarist, no matter what he says in public, never feels remorse. He regards himself as cheated out of his own thoughts and words by the sheer bad luck of someone else having written them first.
Jan 192022
Our age, for all its weakness, reigns unchallenged in calumny and vitriol: no Mirabeaus, few Robespierres, and everywhere Marats.
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.
Dec 292021
To write, to attempt to bring a stranger to one’s view by words alone, shows the deepest faith in human nature: the confirmed skeptic becomes a devout missionary when he puts it on the page.
Dec 282021
Biography is open to any writer who possesses industry without talent. If he also lacks industry, there is memoir.