If Benton had had an administration building with pillars it could have carved over the pillars: Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make yo… - Randall Jarrell

A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss, Goethe said; a correct answer, Gertrude would have said, is like a slap in the face.

One of the most puzzling things about a novel is that “the way it really was” half the time is, and half the time isn’t, the way it ought to be in the novel.

Ruskin says that anyone who expects perfection from a work of art knows nothing of works of art. This is an appealing sentence that, so far as I can see, is not true about a few pictures and statues and pieces of music, short stories and short poems. Whether or not you expect perfection from them, you get it; at least, there is nothing in them that you would want changed. But what Ruskin says is true about novels: anyone who expects perfection from even the greatest novel knows nothing of novels.