With a shift in economic fortunes Wilson had been forced to quit shooting heroin, so he’d turn to reading in his spare time.
— “Tourist Season” by Carl Hiaasen
I looked for refuge in my book and through the weird alchemy that turns misery into humor, much of what I wrote was comedy.
— 2008’s introduction to “The Great Railway Bazaar” by Paul Theroux
But if a waking writer tells you that his tale is only a thing imagined in his sleep, he cheats deliberately the primal desire at the heart of Faërie: the realization, independent of the conceiving mind, of imagined wonder.
— “On Fairy-Stories”, by J. R. R. Tolkien
Faërie itself may perhaps most nearly be translated by Magic - but it is magic of peculiar mood and power, at the furthest pole from the vulgar devices of the laborious, scientific, magician.
— “On Fairy-Stories” by J. R. R. Tolkien
Desvario laborioso e empobrecedor é o de compor vastos livros; o de espraiar por quinhentas páginas uma ideia cuja perfeita exposição oral cabe em poucos minutos. Melhor procedimento é simular que esses livros já existem e oferecer um resumo, um comentário.
— Prólogo de “Ficções”, de Jorge Luís Borges
