It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.

A writer's self-consciousness, for which he is much scorned, is really a mode of interestedness, that inevitably turns outward.

An old essay by John Updike begins, 'We live in an era of gratuitous inventions and negative improvements.' That language is general and abstract, near the top of the ladder. It provokes our thinking, but what concrete evidence leads Updike to his conclusion ? The answer is in his second sentence : 'Consider the beer can.' To be even more specific, Updike was complaining that the invention of the pop-top ruined the aesthetic experience of drinking beer. 'Pop-top' and 'beer' are at the bottom of the ladder, 'aesthetic experience' at the top.

...but with his mother there's no question of liking him they're not even in a way separate people he began in her stomach and if she gave him life she can take it away and if he feels that withdrawal it will be the grave itself.

We all begin life as parasites within the mother, and writers begin their existence imitatively, within the body of letters.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Natural beauty is essentially temporary and sad, hence the impression of obscene mockery which artificial flowers give us.