Novelists of a conservative or more purely aesthetic bent hold up better on the surface, but their novels go in and out of fashion according to relevance or irrelevance.

Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.

Critical thinking is to a liberal education as faith is to religion. ... the converse was true also - faith is to a liberal education as critical thinking is to religion, irrelevant and even damaging.

The desire to write a novel is the single required prerequisite for writing a novel.

An urban novelist never minds a little decay.

Art doesn't exist if you just do what you're told. It only exists as an exercise of individual taste and freedom.

I don't know - is everything the U.S. does a shocking embarrassment?