Status Updates From Always Astonished

What are the qualities that make ...the competent critic? A knowledge of past art or literature, a taste refined by that knowledge, and an impartial and judicious spirit...Anything more than that is already creative spirit, and therefore individuality; and individuality means self-centeredness and a certain imperviousness to the work of others.

"To affirm that these men [his heteronyms] --all different, all well defined, who pass bodiless through his soul--do not exist, the author of these books cannot maintain, because he does not know what existing is, or which one, Hamlet or Shakespeare, is more real, or real in truth."