“(Wallace) Stevens turns to the idea of the weather precisely as the religious man turns to the idea of God.”

“Everyone wants a prodigy to fail it makes our mediocrity more bearable. ”

“Originality must compound with inheritance.”

“The aesthetic and the agonistic are one, according to the ancient Greeks.”

“Emily Dickinson sublimely unnames even the blanks.”

“The inventor knows HOW to borrow.”

“I wandered in the streets, what with the noise the people made, the number of the coaches, the running of the footmen, the swaggering of great courtiers, and the thrusting aside of everybody, many ...”

“I do feel that Ive managed to make something I could maybe call my worldover timelittle by little. And when Im inside it, to some extent, I feel kind of relieved. But the very fact I felt I had to ...”

“The question is why one should be so inwardly preoccupied at all. Why not reach out to others in love and solidarity or peer into the natural world for some glimmer of understanding? Why retreat in...”

“Just because it's fiction doesn't mean it's any less true.”

“Oh, Sweetie. No one ever gets through their TBR list. For every book you finish, you'll add five more. That's just the way it works.”

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”