Bad company Quote by Robert Aris Willmott

“WARNING: Brain dribble from a writer could cause good literature for the reader.”

— Brick Marlin

“Alain Robbe-Grillet once wrote that the worst thing to happen to the novel was the arrival of psychology. You can assume he meant that…

— Rabih Alameddine

“When reading a book, one hopes it doesn’t turn into a painful process. Predictable is bad enough. Laborious is acceptable if the labor produces…

— Chila Woychik

[French] authors are more afraid of offending delicacy and rules, than ambitious of sublimity.

— Horace Walpole

“Generally speaking, writers who have been at it for a while, and who are any good at it, suffer from an acute kind of…

— Mark Slouka

“A good tutor can make one’s college experience a revolutionary passage, to life as well as to literature; a bad one can make it…

— Steven Pressfield

An understandable hunger for potential clients tempts many [career counseling therapists] to overpromise, like creative writing teachers who, out of greed or sentimentality, sometimes…

— Alain de Botton

“This irritated or puzzled such students of literature and their professors as were accustomed to ‘serious’ courses replete with ‘trends ’ and ‘schools ’…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be too severe on them. They show a want…

— Oscar Wilde

“Without proper readiness, we’re subject to a 'flub,' or a costly mistake which might have been easily prevented with some simple homework beforehand. Failing…

— Susan C. Young

“With a drunkard father who neglected his business, how could they ever hope to have education and care they deserve? …I want to have…

— Lynne Withey

“I suspect that every teacher hears the same complaints, but that, being seldom a practicing author, he tends to dismiss them as out of…

— Dorothea Brande