What is the past, after all, but a vast sheet of darkness in which a few moments, pricked apparently at random, shine?
Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart.
I moved to New England partly because it has a real literary past. The ghosts of Hawthorne and Melville still sit on those green hills. The worship of Mammon is also somewhat lessened there by the spirit of irony. I don't get hay fever in New England either.
