The old-fashioned sins of reading is the only sense that matters.

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

Easy to be a critic

Statism is a mental disorder, much akin to Stockholm Syndrome.

Sometimes just when I say hello the right way, I'm like, 'Whoa, I'm so cool.'

I think it takes an introspective person to want to go into the theater and see the dark side of themselves.

People should always mind their own business. More trouble is caused in this world by interference than any other single thing.

I would spend almost as much time planning a practice as conducting it. Everything was planned out each day

Dream stompers are people who want to stomp on your hopes and dreams. Lose their phone numbers

No one goes through life with a whole heart.

My legacy isn't about what I did playing football, but how I use the opportunities that came from playing football.