Amidst all the clutter beyond all the obstacles aside from all the static are the goals set. Put your head down do the best job possible let the flak pass and work towards those goals.

I've always said that an art critic can put aside politics around art.

Oh literature oh the glorious Art how it preys upon the marrow in our bones. It scoops the stuffing out of us and chucks us aside. Alas!

As a precocious teen I dreamed of being Graham Greene. Well as it turned out I never wrote a great novel sadly and I never converted to Catholicism happily but I did do one thing he did. That is in middle age I moved to a seaside town and got into a right barney with the local powers-that-be.