“He suddenly saw the enterprise of literature as essentially mad.”

“Original sin is a very commercial idea, said Duyckinck. How do you think the Bible stays in print year after year?”

“Destroying oneself, he thought ruefully, should always be done at a deliberate pace.”

“I have been considering the possibility that the facts that can be ascertained about this cheese fail to satisfy because the facts themselves mask a metaphysical truth that can be known only throug...”

“Original sin is a very commercial idea,” said Duyckinck. “How do you think the Bible stays in print year after year?”

“It took me years to figure out that upset was upset, and tumultuousness was not the same thing as passion. Love isn't drama.”

“I just wanted to tell you that I understand if you go. Its okay if you have to leave us. Its okay if you want to stop fighting.”

“I'd heard of Evergreen Care Center before. Cass and I had always made fun of the stupid ads they ran on TV, featuring some dragged-out woman with a limp perm and big, painted-on circles under her e...”

“Had he learned nothing from all those years of teaching Hawthorne? Through story after story hed led his boys to consider the folly of obsession with purity its roots sunk deep in pride, flowering...”

“Think of Shakespeare and Melville and you think of thunder, lightning, wind. They all knew the joy of creating in large or small forms, on unlimited or restricted canvases. These are the children o...”

“You could use a moth like that as a symbol in a novel, but it was trite, wasnt it? The old moth-to-the-flame image had been used and used again. It was the stuff of amateur poetry. And she, having ...”

“You could use a moth like that as a symbol in a novel, but it was trite, wasn’t it? The old moth-to-the-flame image had been used and used again. It was the stuff of amateur poetry. And she, having...”