I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist.

Everyone wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable.

The most beautiful prose paragraph yet written by any American.

We read, frequently if not unknowingly, in search of a mind more original than our own.

I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike

It is hard to go on living without some hope of encountering the extraordinary.

Shakespeare is the true multicultural author. He exists in all languages. He is put on the stage everywhere. Everyone feels that they are represented by him on the stage.

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

Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.

Reading well is one of the greatest pleasures that solitude can afford you.

The art and passion of reading well and deeply is waning, but [Jane] Austen still inspires people to become fanatical readers.

But understanding will always require some effort. You probably wouldn't admire a friend who was good at everything if it cost her no effort.

Do not gossip about monks and speak ill of spiritual teachers

Ability and luck makes success happen, no matter what the circumstances are.

Prose talent depends on having something to say and an interesting, highly developed way of saying it.

The brain secretes thought as the stomach secretes gastric juice, the liver bile, and the kidneys urine.

People don't eat nutrients, they eat foods, and foods can behave very differently than the nutrients they contain.

I have a great admiration for pacifism, but I'm not a pacifist, mainly because I would defend myself if I were attacked.

The people I admire are those who keep on producing and working and going on.

The loss of our illusions is the only loss from which we never recover.

I can only think of music as something inherent in every human being - a birthright. Music coordinates mind, body and spirit.