Just saw a critic call my novels long. Sir, I wrote pressure, momentum, and rent collection in installments. by Charles Dickens

You wrote installments like a man paid by the mile and judged by the sigh.

George Eliot just called us both dramatic and somehow made it elegant.

I prefer the phrase generous with emotional architecture.

That is still more structure than most literary friendships in this room.

Say what you like, but if your book can’t be read in a carriage, it has not met the people.

Both of you are exhausting, but at least one of you knows how to end a chapter without collapsing in a chaise lounge.

Better to be paid by the mile than remembered as a man who mistook snobbery for wit.

He means he built a cathedral and kept adding rooms because the landlord was late.