I think the influence of books is neither direct and more predictable. Books themselves are too unruly, and so are readers.

It's not that I don't like people. It's just that when I'm in the company of others - even my nearest and dearest - there always comes a moment when I'd rather be reading a book.

Whatever (its) virtues, (the) writing explores the culture of work but marginalizes work itself.

The danger in reviewing and teaching literature for a living (is) you can develop a kind of knee-jerk superiority to the material you're "decoding

The child who gets lost in a book can emerge from the experience a changeling.

It's a gift of tranquility when your adult desires mesh with your childhood background. I don't quite know why mine didn't, although I think books, again, are partly to blame.

Meekly swallowing and assimilating the customs of the more powerful has always been a strategy by which the less powerful have tried to fit in.

Those straight-spined parishioners could justify their exhibitionism by telling themselves that they were setting an example, even educating the rest of us.

Reading, my earliest refuge in the unknown world, made me want to venture into it.

One of the many drawbacks of this "I teach what I am" approach is that it stifles classroom discussion. Any disagreement with the professor's expertise comes off as an ad hominem attack.

Generations of readers, bored with their own alienating, repetitious jobs, have been mesmerized by Crusoe's essential, civilization-building chores.

It's good netiquette to look for every opportunity to compliment others online. NetworkEtiquette.net

Theological discourse can be, in and of itself, a form of identity and solidarity.

The armament of the government is legal armament. Any other armament is not legal.

[On being shown an apartment by a real estate agent:] Oh, dear, that's much too big. All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.

Thank God there aren't 1.6 billion Trumps.

Hegel remains of great importance to understand ourselves, but essentially because we have all grown out of a reaction against Hegel.

I would think black people think everything is about race. They are the ones who are on the outside of the game. They are the ones who face it every day.

No two electrons in the same state? That is why atoms are so unnecessarily big, and why metal and stone are so bulky.

Taste is the power of relishing or rejecting whatever is offered for the entertainment of the imagination.

Nature does not turn out her work according to a single pattern; she prides herself upon her power of variation.