[T]he judicious reader ought to know what the chief character in any work of the imagination will naturally perform, according to ...the situation he is thrown into, as well as doth the author himself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... in the nineteen-thirties ... the most casual reader of murder mysteries could infallibly detect the villain, as soon as there ...entered a character who had recently washed his neck and did not commit mayhem on the English language.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
New England likes to think it has a civilization based on character. The South likes to think it has a character based on civiliza...tion. A big difference.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the pages of this book contain some successful verse, the reader must excuse me the discourtesy of having usurped it first. Our... nothingness differs little; it is a trivial and chance circumstance that you should be the reader of these exercises and I their author.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman "other" or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is ...no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For, when men shall meet as they ought, each a benefactor, a shower of stars, clothed with thoughts, with deeds, with accomplishme...nts, it should be the festival of nature which all things announce. Of such friendship, love in the sexes is the first symbol, as all other things are symbols of love. Those relations to the best men, which, at one time, we reckoned the romances of youth, become, in the progress of character, the most solid enjoyment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Character wants room; must not be crowded on by persons, nor be judged from glimpses got in the press of affairs, or on few occasi...ons. It needs perspective, as a great building.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »