“The life, no matter how traumatic, never explains the work, if the work is any good.”

—  John Leonard

"No Expectations" http://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/tv/reviews/n_9607/, New York Magazine (12 December 2003)
Context: The life, no matter how traumatic, never explains the work, if the work is any good. W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Doris Lessing, and Saul Bellow variously believed in faeries, funny money, flying saucers, and orgone energy accumulation, but so have millions of other people who never got around to writing even a mediocre poem or novel.

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John Leonard 42
American critic, writer, and commentator 1939–2008

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