The painter Sidney Nolan once told me I tried too hard. Advice I've been trying hard to follow ever since.Howard Jacobson
It would be nice if we could all agree to this proposition: popularity is not the same as achievement.Howard Jacobson
I wouldn't dream of watching motor racing, cycling, or golf - which aren't truly sports anyway.Howard Jacobson
No good writer ever merely cheered us up. But there's an unblinking stare into the darkness of things we have to go elsewhere to find. Jane Austen was made of strong stuff. She was too satiric for D. H. Lawrence's taste and too unforgiving for Kingsley Amis's, but you would still not call her hellish.Howard Jacobson
Again and again, Primo Levi's work is described as indispensable, essential, necessary. None of those terms overstate the case, but they do prepare readers new to Levi for a forbiddingly educative experience, making him a writer unlike all others and the experience of reading him a chore. Which it isn't.Howard Jacobson
If we doubt the power of literature and art to civilise, how come no one has ever been mugged by a person carrying a well-thumbed copy of 'Middlemarch' in his back pocket?Howard Jacobson
