No one has yet managed to be post-Shakespearean.

Everyone wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable.

The most beautiful prose paragraph yet written by any American.

We read, frequently if not unknowingly, in search of a mind more original than our own.

I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike

It is hard to go on living without some hope of encountering the extraordinary.

Shakespeare is the true multicultural author. He exists in all languages. He is put on the stage everywhere. Everyone feels that they are represented by him on the stage.

At our present bad moment, we need above all to recover our sense of literary individuality and of poetic autonomy.

Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.

Reading well is one of the greatest pleasures that solitude can afford you.

The art and passion of reading well and deeply is waning, but [Jane] Austen still inspires people to become fanatical readers.

I am grieved for my children—and boy’s in particular—that this modern age is emasculating men under the guise of “the best interest of the children”.

In the name of the Fathers, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, here goes-I mean Amen.

Twilight is to Vampires what My Little Pony is to Kentucky Derby Winning Horses.

My favorite author is Anton Chekhov, not so much for the plays but for his short stories, and I think he was really my tutor.

...primal people see the objects of this world not (or not only) as solid but as open windows to their divine source.

To me the key thing is getting it right. And if a person's really smart and they're doing fantastic work I don't care if they're a high school kid or a Harvard professor, it's the work that matters.

Military investigations are designed not to find anyone guilty.

What's up with chicks and science?

We're all capable of climbing so much higher than we usually permit ourselves to suppose.

They said you have to use your five best players but I found you win with the five who fit together the best.