Michael Hofmann > Quotes

“It used to be that a novel would put you among people, tell you a story or stories, give you some sense of what it might be like to see a different cut-out and perspective of the world: as a schoolteacher, an adulteress, the wife of a member of Parliament, an officer, a cockroach.”
― Michael Hofmann

“J. D. Salinger, the greatly loved author who “had elected to silence himself. He had freedom of speech but what he had ended up wanting more than anything else, it seemed, was the freedom to be silent.”
― Michael Hofmann, Where Have You Been?: Selected Essays