“Real people are made out of a whole lot of thingsflesh, bone, blood, nerves, stuff like that. Literary people are made out of words.”

“We sometimes hear of the death of literature or of this or that genre, but literature doesn't die, just as it doesn't 'progress' or 'decay.' It expands, it increases. When we feel that it has becom...”

“The real reason for quest is always self-knowledge.”

“Every language has a grammar, a set of rules that govern usage and meaning, and literary language is no different. Its all more or less arbitrary of course, just like language itself.”

“Literary works are not democracies. We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal. We may, but the country of Novels, Etc., doesn't. In that faraway place, no char...”

“Reading is a full contact sport; we crash up against the wave of words with all of our intellectual, imaginative, and emotional resources. What results can sometimes be as much our creation as the ...”

“Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.”

“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”

“There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.”

“He blurred his thens and his nowsin a fantastic drunken distortionwith the thisness and thenness of now and before, re-spectively; wisps of Bburke with Jane infiltrated him without her, the way dry...”

“The normal is that which nobody quite is. If you listen to seemingly dull people very closely, you'll see that they're all mad in different and interesting ways, and are merely struggling to hide it.”

“He blurred his thens and his nows—in a fantastic drunken distortion—with the thisness and thenness of now and before, re-spectively; wisps of Bburke with Jane infiltrated him without her, the way d...”