Alexander Theroux

“The complexity of language, he thought to himself, lies not in its subject matter but in our knotted understanding.”

— Alexander Theroux

I read passionately with a need to know and see the act of reading as an act of cognition and not simply…

— Alexander Theroux

Why should a blacksmith put his hands in the fire if he has tongs?

— Alexander Theroux

I hate injustice, I despise inequity, I condemn hypocrisy, I abhor the lack of reason.

— Alexander Theroux

If on a friend’s bookshelf You cannot find Joyce or Sterne Cervantes, Rabelais, or Burton, You are in danger, face the fact,…

— Alexander Theroux

One's style holds one, thankfully, at bay from the enemies of it but not from the stupid crucifixions by those who must…

— Alexander Theroux

“Pedantry. The delight in living. Brio. The chance to act, to mime, to mock, to mimic.”

— Alexander Theroux

I thought... their elegance... lies not so much in their clothes as in their bodies, and their bodies have received it, and…

— Alexander Theroux

To value the tradition of, and the discipline required for, the craft of fiction seems today pointless. The real Arcadia is a…

— Alexander Theroux

A lover is never a completely self-reliant person viewing the world through his own eyes, but a hostage to a certain delusion.

— Alexander Theroux

Nothing is more subtly destructive than a closed circle of artists feeding on one another. Envy grows from insignificant differences between people,…

— Alexander Theroux

“I came to view the world as a word puzzle and, with no special aptitude I can name, fixed on the whys…

— Alexander Theroux

Brent Berlin and Paul Kay in Basic Color Terms demonstrate exhaustively and empirically, the very simple thesis that anywhere in the world,…

— Alexander Theroux

“Suddenly, political sucksters and realistic insectivores, shoving to the front, puffed up their stomachs and blew lies out of their fingers! A…

— Alexander Theroux

Reviewing books is all about coziness. It is all of it a kind of caucus race. Women review women, Jewish writers review…

— Alexander Theroux

I kneel to my Lord because I am such a failure. I pray, I hope, I look to the Gospels.

— Alexander Theroux

Artists are never complete people. But if it's art that completes them, then what is taken away?

— Alexander Theroux

Ordinary persons, he said, smiling, found no differences between men. The artist found them all.

— Alexander Theroux

“Draft-dodging is what chicken-hawks do best. Dick Cheney, Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh (this capon claimed he had a cyst on…

— Alexander Theroux

He took up his pen, which seemed to parch like a martyrin his hand. He began to write, nevertheless, addressing the nine-and-ninety…

— Alexander Theroux