I would rather be nuts than unattractive.

All the issues have been resolved to her satisfaction. The purpose of all this was not to gloat, but to achieve justice.

Canadian writers don't live in gated mansions; you can just talk to them when you see them lining up at the Second Cup.

Calls for the simplification of abstract or allusive art have always come from governments suspicious of artists themselves. This is why totalitarian regimes have always legislated some form of realism.

In the best stories, people are morally complex; they are flawed. We read them because the world is flawed, and we want to see it truthfully represented. And because it can be thrilling to be shocked and upset, and even to feel, for chilling moments, what it's like to be a bad person.

Increasingly, to dismiss any popular artistic style is seen as the worst kind of snobbery. And snobbery, it goes without saying, is unacceptable in a diverse and democratic world.

No surprise here: Pop music is by far the most conservative art form there is.

It's great that I can look up a fact instantly on my cellphone, but I miss the days in my room with a dog-eared, text-heavy paperback, immersed in the statistics of crime and punishment and lunacy, completely alone with the narrative of human depravity.

Everyone likes to hear that their eccentricities and their addictions are simply evidence of their sensitive artistic nature.

The novel is just fine: It's novelists who aren't doing so well.