It would be nice if we could all agree to this proposition: popularity is not the same as achievement.

It is no judgement of a thing outside yourself to say it makes you ill. The wise reader knows that every pronouncement is, to some degree, an act of self-exposure; the book you find too challenging might only show how ill-equipped you are to face its challenge.

I won't go so far as to say that novels sell in inverse proportion to their worth, for just occasionally, someone like Dickens or George Eliot comes along to prove the opposite.

Howard Jacobson Quotes