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" People sometimes think that I bring home all these old books because I'm addicted, that I'm no better than a hoarder with a houseful of crumbling newspapers. "
Michael Dirda
Sometimes
People
Better
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" For even the ordinary well-read person, the French Enlightenment is largely restricted to the three big-name philosophes: Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire. "
Michael Dirda
Enlightenment
Three
Person
" People who've read my reviews know my tastes, know how I approach a book, know my background. I can write with believable authority. It doesn't mean I'm always right. "
Michael Dirda
Authority
People
Know
" Literary generations come and go, and each generation passeth away and is heard of no more. In the end, simply the making itself - of poems and stories and essays - delivers the only reward a writer can be sure of. And, perhaps, the only one that matters. "
Michael Dirda
End
Come And Go
Go
" I love the look of books published by the firm of Rupert Hart-Davis: They strike me as handsome, elegant, and inviting. I'll pick up almost anything with that imprint, especially if it's in a jacket or priced low. "
Michael Dirda
Love
Me
Look
" In truth, I'm not really a cat person. Seamus, the wonder dog, still deeply mourned by all who knew him, was just about the only pet I've ever really loved. "
Michael Dirda
Cat
Wonder
Truth
" Critics for established venues are vetted by editors; they usually demonstrate a certain objectivity; and they come with known backgrounds and specialized knowledge. "
Michael Dirda
Editors
Knowledge
Come
" When I come to visit my mom - every two or three months - I generally spend five or six hours with her each day. She's always immensely glad to see me, her eldest child, her only son. "
Michael Dirda
Day
Me
Mom
" To my mind, 'Dear Brutus' stands halfway between Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's 'Into the Woods'. Like them, it is a play about enchantment and disillusion, dreams and reality. "
Michael Dirda
Dreams
Night
Reality
" I suppose movie theaters are the churches of the modern age, where we gather reverently to worship the tinsel gods of Hollywood. "
Michael Dirda
Age
Hollywood
Worship
" The savagery and power of Edith Wharton's ghost stories surprised me. "
Michael Dirda
Stories
Surprised
Ghost
" Many people know that Shakespeare's dramatic 'canon' was established in 1623 by the publication of the so-called First Folio. That hefty volume contained thirty-six plays. "
Michael Dirda
Dramatic
Know
First
" Back in the 1950s and '60s, J. M. Barrie's 'Peter Pan' - starring Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard - was regularly aired on network television during the Christmas season. I must have seen it four or five times and remember, in particular, Ritchard's gloriously camp interpretation of Captain Hook. "
Michael Dirda
Remember
Back
Christmas
" Since I make my living as a literary journalist, not a book scout, I spend inordinate amounts of time either reading or writing. "
Michael Dirda
Living
Reading
Writing
" I'm sometimes willing to put in vast, even inordinate amounts of time if I find a project that interests me. "
Michael Dirda
Time
Even
Sometimes
" A reviewer's lot is not always an easy one. I can remember flogging myself to finish Harold Brodkey's 'The Runaway Soul' despite the novel's consummate, unmitigated tedium. "
Michael Dirda
Soul
Finish
Easy
" Most scholarly books we read for the information or insight they contain. But some we return to simply for the pleasure of the author's company. "
Michael Dirda
Company
Information
Insight
" Like most people, I find watching the lazy and quiet underwater realm of a big aquarium exceptionally calming. "
Michael Dirda
Find
Underwater
Quiet
" I've always liked an easygoing, colloquial style. I like the kind of reviewer who is essentially a fellow reader, an enthusiast, a fan. "
Michael Dirda
Style
Always
Fan
" Near my desk, I keep a large plastic carton filled with fresh notebooks and stationery of various kinds, sizes, and qualities. "
Michael Dirda
Fresh
Desk
Keep
" A personal library is a reflection of who you are and who you want to be, of what you value and what you desire, of how much you know and how much more you'd like to know. "
Michael Dirda
Know
Library
Reflection
" On any given day, I'm likely to be working at home, hunched over this keyboard, typing Great Thoughts and Beautiful Sentences - or so they seem at the time, like those beautifully flecked and iridescent stones one finds at the seashore that gradually dry into dull gray pebbles. "
Michael Dirda
Time
Home
Gray
" For me, the two weeks between Christmas and Twelfth Night have come to be reserved for desultory reading. The pressure of the holiday is over, the weather outside is frightful, there are lots of leftovers to munch on, vacation hours are being used up. "
Michael Dirda
Vacation
Weather
Reading
" At 17, I traveled to Mexico in a lemon yellow Mustang and saved money by bunking down in cheap, cockroach-infested flophouses. In my early 20s, I went on to thumb rides through Europe, readily sleeping in train stations, my backpack as a pillow. Once I even hunkered down for a night on a sidewalk grate - for warmth - in Paris. "
Michael Dirda
Money
Yellow
Train
" I don't think of myself as a critic at all. I'm a reviewer and essayist. I mainly hope to share with others my pleasure in the books and authors I write about, though sometimes I do need to cavil and point out shortcomings. "
Michael Dirda
Myself
Hope
Think
" I haven't read for pleasure in 35 years. I mean, I get a lot of pleasure from what I read... For me, it's gotten so that it doesn't seem as though I've read a book unless I've written about it. It really seems the completion of the reading process. "
Michael Dirda
Process
Years
Reading
" At any given moment, I've always assumed that nearly everyone around me was smarter than I was, more naturally gifted, quicker-witted, and probably capable of understanding Heidegger and Derrida. "
Michael Dirda
More
Moment
Understanding
" Summertime, and the reading is easy... Well, maybe not easy, exactly, but July and August are hardly the months to start working your way through the works of Germanic philosophers. Save Hegel, Heidegger, and Husserl for the bleaker days of February. "
Michael Dirda
Way
Reading
Start
" Carl Barks was born in Merrill, Oregon, in 1901, grew up in a farming family, and eventually held a number of blue-collar jobs. He knew what it was to be poor and to work hard for a living. "
Michael Dirda
Family
Born
Living
" I once read that there are more biographical works about Napoleon Bonaparte than any other man in history. "
Michael Dirda
Man
History
Than
" Deep in my cortex, the year is divided into reading seasons. The period from mid-October to Christmas, for instance, is 'ghost story' time, while Jane Austen and P. G. Wodehouse pretty much own April and May. "
Michael Dirda
Time
Story
Seasons