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

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 ask yourself: "What will happen if I say nothing?

It is a newspaper's duty to print the news and raise hell.

My forgiving you doesn't make my heart hurt less. It takes awhile to heal.

I don't promise to forget the mystery, but I know I'll have a marvelous time.

Mathematicians are a bit like the laconic Vermonter who, when asked if he's lived in the state his whole life, replies, "Not yet."

I've always found that the poorer the places that I go, the more smiles I see, and the more happiness I see.

On tour, I'll get up at 5 p.m. and go to bed at 8 in the morning. With fishing, it's the exact opposite. Fishing is the only healthy thing I do. Touring is such a grind; it's the opposite of healthy.

There Is No Failure. It's Only Un-Finished Success.

I'm sure Church got some of his ideas from this trip to Europe.

Every German soldier must be made to feel that he is living under the muzzle of a Russian gun.