Quotes from Richard A. Lanham

IT TAKES SOME temerity to publish, in a new edition, a book written more than thirty years ago.

Your damned nonsense can I stand twice or once, but sometimes always, my God, never. Svatislav Richter, to the second flute at Covent Garden PEOPLE HAVE THOUGHT prose style many things—persuasion or mere music, duty or pastime, ornament only, the man himself. It has been left for Americans to think it a problem: the National Problem, the Communications Problem.

When a style becomes opaque, when you look at it rather than looking through it, the schoolmarmly bell of reproach begins to ring.