I like a puzzle, as you know. So does every scholar worth his salt. It's the reward of the business, to look history in the eye and say, 'I know who you are. You can't fool me'.

It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home.

The heart does not go backward. Only the mind.

When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.

It was not the brutality of what occurred next that changed my mind and brought home to me the full meaning of fear. It was the brilliance of it.

The problem is simply finding the right person. Ask Plato. Just make sure she finishes your thoughts and you finish hers. That's all you need.

As you know, human history is full of evil deeds, and maybe we ought to think of them with tears, not fascination.

...History it seemed could be something entirely different a splash of blood whose agony didn't fade overnight or over centuries.

It's funny; in this era of e-mail and voice mail and all those things that even I did not grow up with, a plain old paper letter takes on amazing intimacy.

There is nothing harder, at moments, than talking to someone who has all the power of silence.

...what will we someday do, I always wonder, without the pleasures of turning through books and stumbling on things we never meant to find?

If you will let it, this Blue Willow platter can represent my promise to fill your life with my trust and love and a houseful of children. - Peter Andersen

You may fancy a glimpse of the abyss where I grovelled!

There are raw materials undeveloped burning inside you but need a platform to materialize and manifest.

People loved to think they were getting a deal. Four times out of five they would look right past what they didn’t want to see.

I guess a sock is also a geometric shape—technically—but I don't know what you'd call it. A socktagon?

I kill flies, I eat meat, you know, whatever.

We know where most of the creativity, the innovation, the stuff that drives productivity lies - in the minds of those closest to the work.

You can't rewrite nothing, but you can rewrite 90 pages of sh*t. Now you've got your sh*t on the page, you can go work.

Stress is not...a badge of courage

mistakes are really not that big of a deal. in fact , as most of us acknowledge we need to make mistakes in order to learn and grow