The usual criticism of a novel about an artist is that, no matter how real he is as a man, he is not real to us as an artist, since we have to take o… - Randall Jarrell

Lending a favorite book has its risks; the borrower may not like it. I still don’t know a better novel than Crime and Punishment — still, every fourth or fifth borrower returns it unfinished: it depresses him; besides that, he didn’t believe it. More borrowers than this return the first volume of Remembrance of Things Past unfinished: they were bored. There is no book you can lend people that all of them will like.

Taking the chance of making a complete fool of himself — and, sometimes, doing so — is the first demand that is made upon any real critic: he must stick his neck out just as the artist does, if he is to be of any real use to art.

The Author to the Reader I’ve read that Luther said (it’s come to me So often that I’ve made it into meter): And even if the world should end tomorrow I still would plant my little apple-tree. Here, reader, is my little apple-tree.