[About John Updike's Rabbit Run] The author fails to convince us that his puppets are interesting in themselves, or that their plight has implications that transcend their narrow world.

[Leaves of Grass is] monstrous because it pretends to persuade the soul while it slights the intellect; because it pretends to gratify the feelings while it outrages the taste.

On a book by Henry James: "Once you put it down, you simply can't pick it up.

So, you're the man who can't spell 'fuck.'"
Dorothy Parker to Norman Mailer after publishers had convinced Mailer to replace the word with a euphemism, 'fug,' in his 1948 book, "The Naked and the Dead.

If a book isn’t at least somewhat polarizing, it didn’t say anything of value.

[Blog entry - November 1, 2014]

There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Fenimore Cooper could write English, but they are all dead now.