“A critic for whom literature is not rooted deeply in life, whose ideas seem to have no relation to lived experience, doesn’t hold much interest for me. By the same token, any writing that’s personal, that does not manage to say something critical about life in general, is equally inert. Our own experiences matter only insofar as they reveal something of experience itself. They are often the clearest lens that we can find, but they are a lens.”

–Christian Wiman, Ambition and Survival.