Sublime

I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. T

These Old Stories continue to infect our collective imagination, distorting how we see and value different groups, cultures, and worldviews. They even warp our conception of “human nature”—selfish, not altruistic; competitive, not cooperative; hardwired, not adaptable. They presuppose a fixed genetic or cultural predisposition that ignores the plas

I think these writers are confronted: If she is no longer a beautiful woman in front of the camera, then what is she possibly doing there?

These little things are great to little man. GOLDSMITH247

Our social moorings aren’t the only things that restrain our creative impulses. We are also limited by false aesthetics: those notions that we have developed in schools and libraries, and from listening to critics that adhere to some misplaced notion of a literary canon.

This is what happens to a man who was made for a great love and not a suit when he does not feel the love. He closes in. He becomes weary. On the bus he looked out of the top-deck windows and saw less of life and felt less sturdy, less sexy, less rich. He was beginning to forget his magnificence. A darkness was coming down over his face like the pu

Prince and Dickens tell me, every day, Not good enough. Not quick enough. Not enough. More, more, more. Think quicker, be more ambitious, be more imaginative. And whatever you do for a living, that’s something you need to hear, every now and again. Were they happy? Probably not. Were they crazy? Probably. That too is beyond the scope of this book.

I wondered: why me?

Already missing New York, I was keen to hear it. Instead she sucked hard on her cigarette and said, in a voice far quieter than I’d ever heard her use: “Thing is, we’re a community, and we got each other’s back. You’ll be there for me, and I’ll be there for you, and we’ll all be there for each other, the whole building. Nothing to be afraid of—we’l