I can't claim to be disenchanted "with the current state of fiction" because I read so little of it. My reading is mostly drawn to history.

What we think we are surely going to do, we don't do; and what we never intended to do, we may one day notice that we have done, and done, and done.

What was lost in the European cataclysm was not only the Jewish past--the whole life of a civilization--but also a major share ofthe Jewish future.... [ellipsis in source] It was not only the intellect of a people in its prime that was excised, but the treasure of a people in its potential.

a. Critics: people who make monuments out of books. b. Biographers: people who make books out of monuments. c. Poets: people who raze monuments. d. Publishers: people who sell rubble. e. Readers: people who buy it.

What I felt then I feel now: the inexorable, unchanging interior hum of doubt and hope.

If we had to say what writing is, we would have to define it essentially as an act of courage.

The imagination has resources and intimations we don't even know about.