Quotes from Michael Dirda

Once upon a time, I sat in my mother's lap as she turned the pages of Golden Books, and I gradually learned to read.

Any man's death diminishes us, but when an artist passes away, we lose not just an island but an entire archipelago.

Some travelers collect souvenirs, postcards, or bumper stickers; I bring home a pencil from the various places I visit.

When I come to visit my mom - every two or three months - I generally spend five or six hours with her each day. She's always immensely glad to see me, her eldest child, her only son.

Many people know that Shakespeare's dramatic 'canon' was established in 1623 by the publication of the so-called First Folio. That hefty volume contained thirty-six plays.

I do think digital media encourages speed-reading, which can be fine if one is simply seeking information. But a serious novel or work of history or volume of poetry is an experience one should savor, take time over.

When I was a boy in the late 1950s, the public library refused to stock books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. They were regarded as vulgar, ill-written potboilers.

The goal of a just society should be to provide satisfying work with a living wage to all its citizens.

In my younger days, I used to visit record shops and covet boxed sets of Beethoven symphonies, Wagner operas, Bach cantatas, Mozart piano concertos. Only rarely was I able to find the money for such luxuries.

Summertime, and the reading is easy... Well, maybe not easy, exactly, but July and August are hardly the months to start working your way through the works of Germanic philosophers. Save Hegel, Heidegger, and Husserl for the bleaker days of February.

Close friends, or those in my pay, sometimes call me a literary polymath, while others say that I'm just a shallow dilettante, superficial and breezy, with a faux-naif style.

In a single lifetime, roughly from 1865 to 1930, one finds the pioneering and patterning works of modern fantasy, science fiction, children's literature and detective fiction, of modern adventure, mystery and romance.

In 1911, Edgar Rice Burroughs, having failed at everything else, decided to write a novel. He was then in his mid-thirties, married with two children, barely supporting his family as the agent for a pencil-sharpener business.

The savagery and power of Edith Wharton's ghost stories surprised me.

Neither my mom nor my dad ever bought me any comic books. Certainly not for Christmas. I suspect that doing so would have violated the Parents' Code.

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

I sometimes lie awake at night and try to imagine what would be the best period in history to spend one's seventy-odd years.

I didn't work for any newspapers in college, never worked for any newspaper before 'The Washington Post'.

In my own case, my folks didn't actually object to comics, as many parents did, but they pretty much felt the things were a waste of time.

Like most people, I find watching the lazy and quiet underwater realm of a big aquarium exceptionally calming.

I haven't read for pleasure in 35 years. I mean, I get a lot of pleasure from what I read... For me, it's gotten so that it doesn't seem as though I've read a book unless I've written about it. It really seems the completion of the reading process.

I don't like gross monetary inequities. I firmly believe that the wrong people and the wrong professions are being rewarded, and rewarded absurdly, and that the hardest work the obscenely rich do is ensuring that they preserve their privileges, status symbols, and bloated bank accounts.

I think of my own work as part of a decades-long conversation about books and reading with people I will mainly never meet.

I don't think of myself as a critic at all. I'm a reviewer and essayist. I mainly hope to share with others my pleasure in the books and authors I write about, though sometimes I do need to cavil and point out shortcomings.