Unlike most authors I find that the date of publication i...

Unlike most authors I find that the date of publication invariably coincides with the moment when my loathing for my book reaches its maximum intensity; I should prefer everybody to ignore it, and this time it seems probable that I shall get what I want. But real writers probably do not have, and in any case couldn't afford, this kind of stage-fright.

Frank Kermode contemplating the suspension of the TLS in a piece that prompted the founding of the LRB

(Breaking the habits of a lifetime, that's...