67 Quotes by Jonathan Galassi

Love in the flesh remained elusive. It drew yet frightened him. This was the late eighties, after all, the most terrifying days of the plague. Surrounded everywhere by insolent youth and beauty, Paul looked and lusted but didn’t dare touch.

You’re not one of those despicable literary sleuths who think he can deduce every last little sordid biographical detail from a writer’s work, are you?

The literary publishers were the Lords of Culture, the master parasites sitting on top of this swarming dunghill.

Don’t give me that Christian forgiveness bullshit, Dukach. I’m a vindictive Jew!” he’d bellow.

Venice was a hallucinatory incubus, the most artificial environment in the world: Disneyland for grown-ups. It reeked of sex and its putrescent partner, death. Thomas Mann had caught its rouged, feverish aura perfectly.

They’d all chatted cordially about the weather, their children, and various authors, steering clear, for the most part, of the ones they’d ‘shared’ (i.e. fought over) and moving on to the general decline of the business and the perfidy of agents – subjects the two old lions were in utter agreement about.

It didn’t matter what you said as long as you were quoted.

One sunny moment, moving inexorably toward sepia.

There are courses you can take to learn the mechanics of the business, like the Radcliffe course, but I don't think they teach you how to edit.