You can only give things up once they start to let you down.
It's no use imagining that bringing great writers together inevitably precipitates great conversation.
Surely: the adverb of a man without an argument.
No pain is too small if it hurts, but any pain is too big if it's cherished.
The Booker 2011 is of no more interest to me than the world heavyweight championship, which I'm not going to win either. It's irrelevant.
I see the author as the person who has written; the writer, the one involved in the process of writing. And they're not necessarily friends. The writer is the one I want to reinforce; the author would just feed on the reviews - so I'm in favour of starving him.