The most beautiful prose paragraph yet written by any American.

Everyone wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable.

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.

A superb and dreadfully moving account of the glory and subsequent murder by the Romanians of the Jewish city in Odessa. . . . Odessa is both celebration and lament and equally impressive as both.

The past is your teacher. The present is your opportunity. The future is your reward.

If you don't like something don't protest from a far. Work within it to change it. Otherwise, you'll just be one voice of many rather than a trusted voice of influence.

You live and die in the batting of my eyes. You cast a wavering shadow over the snow for a day. I cast my shadow over empires across eons." - Orm Hinn Langi the Dragon

She grew more and more vexed with his dignified behavior. By a cruel irony, she was drawing out what was best in his disposition.

You don't always need people to take care of you. Sometimes you need people so you can take care of them.

Strength is a matter of the made-up mind.

... wore sorrow and anger like a worn-out coat and would not throw it away.

I never see my bad guys as simply bad. They want pretty much the same thing that you and I want: they want to be happy.

Are you visiting women? Do not forget your whip

As a young guy from south London, I wanted to be able to make myself stand out.