Almost anything at all can be transmuted into a labyrinth.

At our present bad moment, we need above all to recover our sense of literary individuality and of poetic autonomy.

Samuel Johnson said Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, "tuned the English tongue.

One reads for oneself and for strangers.

Originality must compound with inheritance.

The aesthetic and the agonistic are one, according to the ancient Greeks.

The inventor knows HOW to borrow.

Persuasion is a strong but subdued outrider.

King die hard, in Shakespeare and in life.

Shakespeare's exquisite imagining belies our total inability to live in the present moment.

Reviewing bad books is bad for the character – WH Auden

We're so afraid of being hurt that we become the abuser first.

Whatever ought to be, can be.

I am an agnostic I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of.

When you fall ill, people send you CDs. Very often, in my experience, these are by Leonard Cohen

Maybe you know why a child can reject a hot dog with mustard served on a soft bun at home, yet eat six of them two hours later at fifty cents each.

One can say everything best over a meal.

In order to assure an adequate national defense, it is necessary - and sufficient - to be in a position in case of war to conquer the command of the air.

Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God!

All paintings start with concept, which is another word for image or imagination. The mistake is to isolate the concept as if the idea did not need to be given permanent form.

Representational painters: place your works in a larger context. Give your work not only breadth but breath. Do not 'copy' what you see outwardly but give it 'spirit.