It's one of those secrets that's embarrassing to acknowledge, but we do love our students.

Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

I never change, I simply become more myself.

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

No man ever properly calculates from time to time what it is his duty to avoid.

Government is basically a parasite, and if the host doesn't grow, then government suffers.

But principles defended at the expense of pragmatic application is the business of priests.

If a comparative-literature major had existed at Harvard College for undergraduates I would have surely gone in that direction.

The day of your birth leads you to death as well as to life.

It's too late to apologize for. I have already forgiven you.

And I love doing my own projects; that's what I've always wanted to do.

The reason we call that pitch up and in is because the arms are attached to the shoulder.

The way a government treats refugees is very instructive.

Too many of us fail to fulfill our needs because we say no rather than yes, yes when we should say no.