Michael Dirda - Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life (2006)

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Most serious novels are machines for producing anxiety. Pick up a classic or a current best seller, and you'll find people in trouble.

Michael Dirda
One of the ancient goals of criticism was called the correction of taste.

Michael Dirda
We riffle through the pages with, as reviewers used to say, our pulses racing, stomachs in knots, hearts pounding.

Michael Dirda
Such temperaments allow one to step back from painful situations and view them with a little detachment.... To the genial-spirited anything that happens can be shrugged off as yet another part of 'life's rich pageant'.

Michael Dirda
Critics and reviewers can be loosely divided into two camps: Those who never let you forget that they are judge, jury, and if need be, executioner; and those who humble themselves before a poem or novel, waiting for it to reveal its secrets to them.

Michael Dirda
Certainly if there is any worldly talent worth cultivating, it's a sense of humor. To possess a cheerful outlook may be the greatest gift of the gods, the distant second best being a taste for irony.

Michael Dirda
The world is a library of strange and wonderful books, and sometimes we just need to go prowling through the stacks.

Michael Dirda
Throughout history the exemplary teacher has never been just an instructor in a subject; he is nearly always its living advertisement.

Michael Dirda
Those journeys, with their serendipitous discoveries and misguided side trips, allow us to probe our characters, indulge our passions and prejudices, and finally choose books for which we possess a real affinity.

Michael Dirda