Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

Paranoids are the only ones who notice things anymore.

Ruefulness is one of the classical tones of American fiction. It fosters a native, deglamorized form of anxiety.

I feel about lending a book the way most fathers feel about their daughters living with a man out of wedlock.

Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.

To choose a writer for a friend is like palling around with your cardiologist, who might be musing as you talk to him that you are a sinking man. A writer's love for another writer is never quite free of malice. He may enjoy discussing your failures even more than you do. He probably sees you as tragic, like his characters - or unworthy of tragedy, which is worse.