Everything in life is arbitrary yet must be over-determined in literature. Jean McGarry knows how to tell a persuasive tale illuminating these truths.

Everyone wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable.

The most beautiful prose paragraph yet written by any American.

We read, frequently if not unknowingly, in search of a mind more original than our own.

I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike

It is hard to go on living without some hope of encountering the extraordinary.

Shakespeare is the true multicultural author. He exists in all languages. He is put on the stage everywhere. Everyone feels that they are represented by him on the stage.

At our present bad moment, we need above all to recover our sense of literary individuality and of poetic autonomy.

Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.

Reading well is one of the greatest pleasures that solitude can afford you.

The art and passion of reading well and deeply is waning, but [Jane] Austen still inspires people to become fanatical readers.

Your job is not to be a fire killer. Your job is to prevent fires.

Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

I just think technology is pretty amazing. Like all things that are great, you have to be responsible about how much you use it.

Superman and Robinhood are still alive in Hollywood.

You've heard of people living in a fool's paradise? Well, Leonora has a duplex there.

If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing, If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing.

Women ... I mean, they are the other half of the sky, and without them there is nothing. And without us there's nothing. There's only the two together creating children, creating society.

Even when I was little, people would always ask me if I wanted to be a movie star, and I would always say, "No, I just want to be an actor."