Nietzsche tended to equate the memorable with the painful.

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

A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.

And as I venture into anothers pit of everlasting darkness, I'll return with a simple blackened rose. and with that rose I shall write the stories it tells.

What's a cult? It just means not enough people to make a minority.

I think it's hilarious at 40 years old to bring out my roller skates from 'Starlight Express.' I find the humor and even the sadness in it hilarious and something to celebrate.

Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.

In a multipolar world, there must be more powers capable of taking responsibility, the US and Europe must be able to unite to achieve peace in the Middle East.

I'm a technophobe. I can't crack the iPhone, and the extent of my multitasking is being able to talk while I make a drink.

I hope to have gathered To repay your kindness The willow leaves Scattered in the garden.

Words are a distraction to enlightenment. Getting rid of conceptual thinking means enlightenment.

Render any politician down and there's enough fat to fry an egg.