“The greatness of a writer has nothing to do with subject matter itself, only with how much the subject matter touches the author.”

“[It] is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience. […] The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining. (87)”

“Most modern literary criticism is literary and nothing else—that is, it concentrates on an author's style and thinks it rather vulgar to notice his subject matter.”

“What’s strange is how many beginning writers seem to think that grammar is irrelevant, or that they are somehow above or beyond this subject more fit for a schoolchild than the future author of great literature.”

“Writers do not find subjects; subjects find them.”

“Genuineness is often sacrificed in order to showcase the author's control over the form and subject matter, the end result technically sound but emotionally cold.”