I believe in open government. I've always believed in open government. I don't e-mail, however. And there's a reason: I don't want you reading my personal stuff.
Sometimes, reading a blog, which I do infrequently, I see that generations of Americans have been wilfully crippled, and can no longer spell or write a sentence.
People have pointed out evidences of personal feeling in my notices as if they were accusing me of a misdemeanor, not knowing that criticism written without personal feeling is not worth reading. It is the capacity for making good or bad art a personal matter that makes a man a critic.
An imaginative book renders us much more service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward, when we arrive atthe precise sense of the author. I think nothing is of any value in books, excepting the transcendental and extraordinary.
Mr. Pickwick took a seat and the paper, but instead of reading the latter, peeped over the top of it, and took a survey of the man of business, who was an elderly, pimply-faced, vegetable-diet sort of man, in a black coat, dark mixture trousers, and small black gaiters; a kind of being who seemed to be an essential part of the desk at which he was writing, and to have as much thought or sentiment.
In company with people of your own trade you ordinarily speak of other writers' books. The better the writers the less they will speak about what they have written themselves. Joyce was a very great writer and he would only explain what he was doing to jerks. Other writers that he respected were supposed to be able to know what he was doing by reading it.
Promiscuous reading is necessary to the constituting of human nature. The attempt to keep out evil doctrine by licensing is like the exploit of that gallant man who thought to keep out the crows by shutting the park gate.
Pity is for this life, pity is the worm inside the meat, pity is the meat, pity is the shaking pencil, pity is the shaking voice-- not enough money, not enough love--pity for all of us--it is our grace, walking down the ramp or on the moving sidewalk, sitting in a chair, reading the paper, pity, turning a leaf to the light, arranging a thorn.
When fear enters the heart of a man at hearing the names of candidates and the reading of laws that are proposed, then is the State safe, but when these things are heard without regard, as above or below us, then is the Commonwealth sick or dead.
The fiction I've written and published is certainly inflected by the work of authors I was reading or translating at the time. One of my methods for developing my own voice in fiction, a process I am taking very slowly and deliberately, is through these very intense encounters with certain writers. Strength and power in fiction is being able to resist these intoxicating voices, recognizing that they are the signatures of other writers and not one's own.