Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.

Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.

To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking -- and since it cannot, in order read more

To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking -- and since it cannot, in order to become its echo I have, in a way, to silence it. I bring to this incessant speech the decisiveness, the authority of my own silence.

Wear the old coat and buy the new book.

Wear the old coat and buy the new book.

Writers are the main landmarks of the past.

Writers are the main landmarks of the past.

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before read more

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language read more

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it's a really stupid thing to want to do.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it's a really stupid thing to want to do.

Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends.

Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends.