Quotes from Elizabeth Hardwick

Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more.

Art is a profession, not a shrine.

The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.

Writing is not "the establishment of a professional reputation" as if one were a doctor or lawyer; it is not properly in the sentence with creation of a family and the purchase of a home.