Being neurotic seemed to be a kind of wild card, an all-purpose explanation.

Moral self-infatuation has its own corruptions, after all. With time, almost every other principle of the magazine acquired an ironic echo, a sort of cackling aftermath.

Self-pity” is just sadness, I think, in the pejorative.

Most movies are not very good. Most people know it and like to see them anyway.

The radical intelligence in the moderate position is the only place where the center holds. Or so it seems.

The whole magic of a plot requires that somebody be impeded from getting something over with.

It is always self-defeating to pretend to the style of a generation younger than your own; it simply erases your own experience in history.