There is no God but God, and his name is William Shakespeare.

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 reason I have felt so empty, so lost at times, is because you were missing.

God tests His real friends more severely than the lukewarm ones.

Doctor feel my purse.

The law is constantly based on notions of morality, and if all laws representing essentially moral choices are to be invalidated under the due process clause, the courts will be very busy indeed.

I was drinking tea the other day, and I thought: they used to fight wars over this.

The man who can keep a secret may be wise, but he is not half as wise as the man with no secrets to keep.

You have to look beyond race because as a human being you have to experience the person from the inside first

Silence does not equal patriotism. Obedience is not the American way.

...water laughing softly down a black stone wall.

When I began to make some money, I really wanted to have a home.