No poem, not even Shakespeare or Milton or Chaucer, is ever strong enough to totally exclude every crucial precursor text or poem.

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.

Always listen to the voice of your conscience. If your conscience conflicts with your faith, question everything.

Your actions prove you efficiency and your lip service proves your inability.

And by the way, if I always tell you the truth, you might start to believe me.

Keep up with the world. There's changes everyday so if you don't think of what to do today, you have to think of what to do tomorrow.

These days cry out, as never before, for us to pay attention, so we can move through them and get our joy and pride back.

We are a little piece of continual change, looking at an infinite quantity of continual change.

In a district of ten families, there must be someone as honorable and sincere as I, but none as fond of learning.

People don't die of old age, they die of diseases that accompany old age, and they are preventable.

Read a ton. Take a workshop course so you learn to give and get criticism.

It was just hilarious how my first reaction was, "Oh, no, it's another vampire show. I'm not interested." And then, I read the script and thought it was brilliant.