Romance depends upon imperfect knowledge.

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

There's something liberating about not pretending. Dare to embarrass yourself. Risk.

The birth of my sons. The birth of new emotions...what a privilege. What a blessing.

The obvious answer to money is to have tons of it - simply figure out how to make more money than you really need and go for it.

A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.

What is really needed to make democracy function is not knowledge of facts, but right education.

All men seek esteem; the best by lifting themselves, which is hard to do, the rest by shoving others down, which is much easier.

I never base a character on someone I know. You can get ideas from real life, but every character you write is some aspect of yourself.

Let's face it: Many on the political right believe this president ought not to be there - they oppose him not for his polices and political view but for who he is, an African American!

I will spend my heaven doing good on earth.

There is a debt of service due from every man to his country, proportioned to the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to him.