Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

Some of the exuberance of my essay-writing has gone because I'm worried about the uses they could serve.

I don't consider devotion to the past a form of snobbery. Just one of the more disastrous forms of unrequited love.

Salter is a writer who particularly rewards those for whom reading is an intense pleasure. He is among the very few North American writers all of whose work I want to read, whose as-yet-unpublished books I wait for impatiently.

She felt herself needing more and more sleep. When she awoke in the morning, she thought of when she might lie down again - and when she would sleep. She started going to the movies.

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.

Self-exposure is commendable in art only when it is of a quality and complexity that allows other people to learn about themselves from it.