Persuasion is a strong but subdued outrider.

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.

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

Great literature will insist upon its self-sufficiency in the face of the worthiest causes

In the future he would remember to be kinder to her clothing... provided she didn't look so damn good in them.

Be strong, be confident and be determined.

Fear blossomed within her - not like a flower, but like blood welling from a gunshot wound, spreading throughout her entire body.

I had but one love and it is gone and now there is nothing and I tell you, that is the most awful feeling in the world.

The Lord has predestined a certain path for every person

We lost track of which was which, but we were fairly sure that some of the creatures had been borne away still in the darkness of paganism, and that worried us a good deal.

I ask myself why I do it. Maybe it's to prove I'm still around. It takes a lot out of my body. I'm not an NBA player anymore. At my age, very few people can handle it.

Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.

My favorite part of any baseball book - and I read a lot of them - is the anecdotes. I believe there is a story within every boxscore and for me - the more outrageous the better!

Communication is a two-way street. And while we revel in the reality that we can always get through to heaven, our concern should be whether our Lord can always get through to us.