Sometimes one succeeds, sometimes one fails.

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.

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living differ from the dead.

The hardest thing is to do something which is close to nothing because it is demanding all of you.

The scientists have given [modern man] the impression that there is nothing he cannot know, and false propagandists have told him that there is nothing he cannot have.

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

Is your life really so bad? This city is full of opportunities –”“Can you call it a city?” Marcus asked. “No gymnasium, no theatre, no forum? Where is the life a Roman man should lead?

You're not so bad. You'll get there. You should have seen Alec do flips at first. I think he kicked himself in the head once.

I don't want to make more friends. I have four kids, I have plenty of friends, and all the personal relationships I need.

If I had a mind to rent pigs, I'd be mighty upset. A man that likes to rent pigs won't be stopped.

Instead of just getting old and giving up and dying, let's learn to make a huge contribution to life.

Anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad.