Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.

Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

I moved to New England partly because it has a real literary past. The ghosts of Hawthorne and Melville still sit on those green hills. The worship of Mammon i…