A writer never reads his work. For him, it is the unreadable, a secret, and he cannot remain face to face with it. A secret, becau...se he is separated from it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have been required to put roots and shoots and little stems and tendrils together much as their author did, to wander discourage...d and confused as Hansel and Gretel through a dark wood of witches, to strike the hot right way suddenly, but just as suddenly to mire, to drag, to speed, to shout Urreek! to fall asleep, to submit to revelations, certainly to curl a lip, to doubt, unnose a disdainful snort, snick a superior snicker, curse, and then at some point not very pleasantly to realize that the game I'm playing is the game of creation itself, because Tender Buttons is above all a book of kits like those from which harpsichords or paper planes or model bottle boats are fashioned, with intricacy no objection, patience a demand, unreadable plans a pleasure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Here [in London, history] ... seemed the very fabric of things, as if the city were a single growth of stone and brick, uncounted ...strata of message and meaning, age upon age, generated over the centuries to the dictates of some now all-but-unreadable DNA of commerce and empire.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The writer who aims at producing the platitudes which are "not for an age, but for all time" has his reward in being unreadable in... all ages.... The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only sort of man who writes about all people and about all time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »