I was in Venice teaching, so I reread Henry James's "The Wings of the Dove." I love James.

Now a Protestant confronting a Catholic ghost is exactly Shakespeare's way of grappling with what was not simply a general social problem but one lived out in his own life.

My father who in this case was an obsessive life-long storyteller, and by a very peculiar trick of my father's. My father would tell a very, very long story, and the punch line would be in Yiddish.

First of all, there was a volcano of words, an eruption of words that Shakespeare had never used before that had never been used in the English language before. It's astonishing. It pours out of him.

One of my favorite writers is Michel de Montaigne. My wife gave me a beautiful 17th-century edition of Montaigne's essays translated by John Florio. That's probably my most precious possession.

Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity.

The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.

I believe that nothing comes of nothing, even in Shakespeare. I wanted to know where he got the matter he was working with and what he did with that matter.

No special writing rituals. And my desk is usually cluttered.

What I wanted to do was to get that sense of being in touch with this lost world while holding onto what draws readers and audiences there in the first place.

I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.

The right one for you will move mountains to be with you - he won't hide behind them.

Recollection is the only paradise from which we cannot be turned out.

Save your money. You're going to need twice as much money in your old age as you think.

The mind of an enlightened human being is flexible and adaptable. The mind of the ignorant person is conditioned and fixed.

Neoclassical economics insists that advertising cannot force consumers to buy anything they don't already want to buy.

I don't know if the optimists or the pessimists are right. But, the optimists are going to get something done.

Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us.

sorry,no thanks,if i was going to die it could wait until tomorrow morning.

It's real hard to come up with something unique. We've seen just about everything over the last 10 years.

It feels good to be winded, having trouble breathing, chest hurts [during a workout]... I'm alive.