Michael Dirda

I didn't work for any newspapers in college, never worked for any newspaper before 'The Washington Post'.

The Admirable Crichton' is probably Barrie's most famous work after 'Peter Pan', nearly a pendant to that classic.

My gift, if that's not too grandiose a term, is one for describing novels, biographies, and works of history in such a way that people want to read them.

I think of my own work as part of a decades-long conversation about books and reading with people I will mainly never meet.

I suppose movie theaters are the churches of the modern age, where we gather reverently to worship the tinsel gods of Hollywood.

Literary generations come and go, and each generation passeth away and is heard of no more. In the end, simply the making itself - of poems and stories and essays - delivers the only reward a writer can be sure of. And, perhaps, the only one that matters.

A personal library is a reflection of who you are and who you want to be, of what you value and what you desire, of how much you know and how much more you'd like to know.