The engineering is secondary to the vision.

Nothing is so awesomely unfamiliar as the familiar that discloses itself at the end of a journey. Nothing shakes the heart so much as meeting-far, far away-what you last met at home.

Two things remain irretrievable: time and a first impression.

Much of the academy on the humanities side, English departments in particular, no longer write what can pass for normal English.

Of comic novels that have quaffed the elixir of 'classic': Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm.

literature is an instrument of a culture, not a summary of it.

One reason writers write is out of revenge. Life hurts; certain ideas and experiences hurt; one wants to clarify, to set out illuminations, to replay the old bad scenes and get the Treppenworte said -- the words one didn't have the strength or ripeness to say when those words were necessary for one's dignity or survival.