It has always been dangerous to institutionalize hope, and we no longer live in a society in which we will be allowed to institutionalize memory.

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

You are a living, breathing magnet, and love is your magnetic power.

Life is more valuable than money.

There are more places you haven't heard of then you're heard of!' I loved that

The history of art is the history of revivals.

We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself.

There would be too great darkness, if truth had not visible signs.

Just another point of view, I'm just a reflection of you.

The conversation of those who like to lord it over us is very disagreeable. But we should always be ready to graciously acknowledge the truth, no matter in what guise it comes to us.

The worst job I ever had was as a forensicologist for the United Nations. One time I thought I'd come across the mass grave of a thousand snowmen, but it turns out it was just a field of carrots.

If you don't plan your time, someone else will help you waste it.