Quote by John Green

“Lugubrious and pretentious at the same time.”

— Lauren Groff

“Impassioned in his gesticulation, his voice persuasive, his smile fascinating, his reasoning clear and consequential, he held his listeners fast for all the time…

— Umberto Eco

“And he felt dubious and discontented suddenly, and wondered whether he was really and truly successful as a human being.”

— E. M. Forster

“Like other self-educated men, he was vain of his vocabulary.”

— Ross Macdonald

“another of their acquaintances finds himself mesmerised by the way that he 'always had something of ... rivetting stupidity to say on any subject'.”

— Craig Brown

“A classical education saves you from being fooled by pretentiousness, which is what most current fiction is too full of.”

— Raymond Chandler

“He had grown accustomed to his wife by this time, and regarded silence on his own part as a great preservative against long inconsequential…

— Elizabeth Gaskell

“Prestidigitation had been my favorite. It was fun to say, too, a good word to work into random sentences. It was a wonder I…

— Annie Bellet

“The more the words of others impressed him with their factual content, the more he felt he must wait for his own facts before…

— Louis Zukofsky

“We struck up a conversation, taking pains at first to give it an easy flow and sticking to the most frivolous topics. Did he,…

— Günter Grass

“He is too presumptuous about the inanities of appearances, poor realities gone for a toss.”

— Aporva Kala

“He was the smartest and best-read person any of us had every known, but he wore his learning so lightly and had such curiosity…

— Will Schwalbe