"What makes The Present Age and The Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle important is not so much that the former essay anticipates Heidegger and the latter, Barth: it would be more accurate to say that Heidegger’s originality is widely overestimated, and that many things he says at great length in his highly obscure German were said earlier by various writers who had made the same points much more elegantly, and that some of these writers, including Kierkegaard, were known to Heidegger. Why should Kierkegaard’s significance depend on someone else’s, quite especially when many points that others copied from him may be wrong?"

"Don’t let anyone “should” all over you and don’t “should” all over yourself. Writers: nobody knows the story you want to tell better than you do. You get to decide what feedback serves you and the res…"

"Writers are a basically insecure bunch. We are convinced that everything we do sucks, all the time. It's something you have to fight. The best way to make sure that your writing will never be particul…"

"A man makes mistakes, but he lives by them. Foolish it may be on occassion. But in the main it is the only way to live. We are what we say only so long as our words are iron."

"There are essential and inessential insanities. The latter are solar in character, the former are linked to the moon. Inessential insanities are a brittle amalgamation of ambition, aggression, and pre…"