I have a friend who says that reviewers are the tickbirds of the literary rhinoceros-but he is being kind. Tickbirds perform a valuable service to the rhino and the rhino hardly notices the birds.
John IrvingThe history of a city was like the history of a familyโthere is closeness and even affection, but death eventually separates everyone from each other. It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive forever; a writerโs job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories.
John Irving