Lipton’s Journal/January 26, 1955/278

I know now why I was never able to study exhaustively things which interested me. Particularly psychoanalysis. I have always been a reader and a studier in bits and pieces. It is because deep within me I sensed the wisdom of the old saw reversed. “Too muchA lot of knowledge is a dangerous thing.” —Norman Mailer. I am not pleading for no knowledge, nor too little knowledge, but to learn a subject exhaustively is to give oneself a vested interest in it. It makes it that much more difficult to see it in a new way, to be creative. No wonder critics are critics and novelists are novelists.