John Warner
American writer and book critic; writes the Biblioracle books column for the Chicago Tribune and contributes to Inside Higher Ed. Author of Why They Can't Write (2018) and More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI (2025). Writes a weekly newsletter on reading and writing.
John Warner did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
-
Their wordsThese moves by senior leadership at Big 5 publishers are deliberately courting the major downsides of AI use, de-skilling and self-alienation.
↗The Biblioracle Recommendsbiblioracle.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
-
Their wordsOver time, humans will lose the capacity to produce these materials for themselves, relying on the AI product more and more, losing even the capacity for discernment over the AI-generated materials.
↗The Biblioracle Recommendsbiblioracle.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
-
Their wordsAutomating the production of publicity and marketing materials so they can be completed more efficiently "at scale" is just about the worst idea imaginable. This is particularly true when it comes to publicity outreach to reviewers or other outlets of book coverage.
↗The Biblioracle Recommendsbiblioracle.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 5 weeks earlier
-
Their wordsThe problem appears to be men and the larger "problem of men" which has led to men not reading.
↗The Biblioracle Recommendsbiblioracle.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
-
Their wordsLincoln Michel theorized that perhaps podcasts have replaced some of the demand for books, a theory which makes sense to me.
↗The Biblioracle Recommendsbiblioracle.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
-
Their wordsI think it's likely that the nonfiction market is experiencing a serious contraction or significant down cycle that nothing will reverse
↗The Biblioracle Recommendsbiblioracle.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 7 days earlier
-
Their wordsThe speed with which elite institutions such as Columbia and Brown abandoned their commitment to diversity suggests that slogans and programs are not particularly durable.
↗The Biblioracle Recommendsbiblioracle.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
-
Their wordsIt's possible that our society will evolve in such a way that those of us who remain slow and unproductive because we must rely on our brains and human perceptions for our writing will be left behind in the marketplace that supports this work.
↗The Biblioracle Recommendsbiblioracle.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 7 days earlier
-
Their wordsThat you must be both heedless in the pursuit of your desires, but to make sure that these desires do not become the direct target of your efforts?
↗The Biblioracle Recommendsbiblioracle.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
-
Our reading
The pursuit of excellence in an art can require a radical compression of attention and self.
Their wordsBut the radical compression of his attention and sense of himself have allowed him to become a transcendent practitioner of an art-something few of us get to be.
↗The Biblioracle Recommendsbiblioracle.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 3 weeks earlier
-
Their wordsThese detectors work through pattern recognition and given that LLM text is extruded as the byproduct of ingesting a massive corpus of human text, it's not a stretch to believe that some of this text under certain prompting conditions may defy the patterns. At the same time, human-created text may mirror that which the detector decides is AI.
↗The Biblioracle Recommendsbiblioracle.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
-
Their wordsAt Inside Higher Ed I explored my disgust at Harvard's choice to disband its writing center and lay off its brilliant director, Jane Rosenzweig. These places truly do not care about students, and whatever lip service they pay about the importance of learning to write is B.S.
↗The Biblioracle Recommendsbiblioracle.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece