Shakespeare and his few peers invented all of us.

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

I want to kiss you. I want to so badly I can barely think of anything else. When you enter a room it’s my only thought, and it torments me night and day.

Living in a place like this, she must have learned how to see all the monsters that can hide a person.

I'm basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.

I run four miles most days, at about 8:00 to 8:15 pace. It's totally relaxed.

It's a civil war, and Arjuna knows a lot of people who are on the opposite side of the battlefield - they've been his friends.

What's the ROI of your mum? You can't put a value on a relationship.

Hollywood is like an empty wastebasket.

I get bored very easily. I have a voracious appetite and I do not feel alive if I'm repeating something I'm good at. So I'm always looking for new challenges.

If you're gonna get wasted, get wasted elegantly.

Dream big with no limitations.