J.C. Hallman Quotes

It's only in books--actual printed books--that you can easily start and stop your reading, that you can preread and reread, and, these days, as the book itself suffers from a cluster of plagues, it seems only right to pause and assert that the books that ought to be rescued these days are not the books that require a "spoiler alert"--such books are already spoiled--but books that aren't spoiled even if you know what's going to happen, even if you peek at the end, even if you're reading them for a second, or fifth, or dozenth time.

It's the obligation of all writers to shoulder up against the wall of the permissible and shove. Writers must shove no matter how large the obstacle and without concern for the strength of those pushing back from the other side. This shoving is made more difficult by the fact that those pushing back are very often the same shovers who moved the wall to where it now stands--they nudged it forward as far as they could stomach it, and cannot tolerate a millimeter more.

In the analysis of books, as in the analysis of complex world events, we hover between two kinds of error: ascribing too much meaning where there is little, if any, to be found, and ignoring meaning that stares us right in the face.

Those who lead a literary life seem old when they're young and young when they're old, but they're never actually either. Like a good book, they are bound by neither category nor time.

If literature is humanity at its absolute best, striving after the hard truths, straining to shed the egos that cripple nonliterary relationships, then books, the actual objects of books, are the physical expressions of the struggle to craft a better humanity. Entering the culture of books, even the culture of a single book--and every book is the culture of its audience--makes the world feel a little better, a little more true and welcoming.