Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else

I use a whole lot of half-assed semicolons; there was one of them just now; that was a semicolon after 'semicolons,' and another one after 'now.

My great-aunt. . . . said nobody under 18 had any business reading Dickens. . . . She was right.

To break a promise is to deny the reality of the past. Therefore it is to deny the hope of a real future.

If you're a fiction writer, though, I can tell you how to let people talk through you. Listen. Just be quiet, and listen. Let the character talk. Don't censor, don't control. Listen, and write.

Crankish attacks on the freedom to read are common at present. When backed and coordinated by organized groups, they become sinister.

There's a good deal in common between the mind's eye and the TV screen, and though the TV set has all too often been the boobtube, it could be, it can be, the box of dreams.