The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc.

by Jonathan Lethem

Humans are social animals, but I’d been socialized to ghosts, arrangements of sentences on pages, and needed urgently to be audible to them.

better self has fled into his works feels an almost malicious joy when he sees his body and spirit slowly broken into and destroyed by time; it is as if he were in a corner, watching a thief at work on his safe, all the while knowing that it is empty and that all his treasures have been rescued.”