David

“The most successful critics are always scribbling things in their programs, largely because it gives them an important and industrious air. Also, it is interesting to try to figure out what you've written afterward. Last week, for instance, I made a very helpful note during the second act of a drama called "They Walk Alone." "Lanchstr get face stuck 1 these nights awful if," it seemed to say.”
― Wolcott Gibbs, Backward Ran Sentences: The Best of Wolcott Gibbs from The New Yorker

“Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“Listening to other opinions was invariably more profitable than antagonizing their owners by pointing out tiresome objections.”
― William Haggard

“The latter's boast that he had never read a book for pleasure in his life did not predispose me in his favour.”
― Anthony Powell, A Question of Upbringing