The Shakespeare that Shakespeare became is the name that's attached to these astonishing objects that he left behind.

Now a Protestant confronting a Catholic ghost is exactly Shakespeare's way of grappling with what was not simply a general social problem but one lived out in his own life.

My father who in this case was an obsessive life-long storyteller, and by a very peculiar trick of my father's. My father would tell a very, very long story, and the punch line would be in Yiddish.

First of all, there was a volcano of words, an eruption of words that Shakespeare had never used before that had never been used in the English language before. It's astonishing. It pours out of him.

One of my favorite writers is Michel de Montaigne. My wife gave me a beautiful 17th-century edition of Montaigne's essays translated by John Florio. That's probably my most precious possession.

Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity.

The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.

I believe that nothing comes of nothing, even in Shakespeare. I wanted to know where he got the matter he was working with and what he did with that matter.

No special writing rituals. And my desk is usually cluttered.

What I wanted to do was to get that sense of being in touch with this lost world while holding onto what draws readers and audiences there in the first place.

I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.

Belief and faith are great, but very few people have been led astray by thinking for themselves.

I just want to throw strikes. If I can't throw strikes, I'm worthless.

The motive power of democracy is love

...it occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again.

Faith is not a matter of trusting that events will always occur to our liking, but of trust that, whatever happens, our inner resources will be equal to the moment.

No star playing, just football.

Let nothing perturb you, nothing frighten you. All things pass. God does not change. Patience achieves everything.

He only is a well-made man who has a good determination.

I just want to be written about as a normal artist.

You can't second-guess ineffability, I always say.