“There’s no such thing as a writer who yearns to be ignored. But writers thrive only in hushed vassalage to their own imaginations, shackled to their desks, trying to hear hints of that ancient inward thrum. When Montaigne proposes ‘an unimportant life without luster,’ you take his point. ‘A talent,’ said Goethe, ‘is formed in stillness.’ It’s called the limelight for a reason: Sooner or later you get limed by the light—burned, smeared, blinded.”

“There was a moment in Rome, writes H.J. Jackson in her new book, Those Who Write for Immortality: Romantic Reputations and the Dream of Lasting Fame, ‘when writers were elevated to a place among the immortals,’ and litterateurs have been dazzled by that elevation ever since.” (via Books, Inq.)