What is important-what lasts-in another language is not what is said but what is written. For the essence of an age, we look to its poetry and its prose, not its talk shows.

What lasts is what is written. We look to literature to find the essence of an age.

One attraction of Latin is that you can immerse yourself in the poems of Horace and Catullus without fretting over how to say, "Have a nice day."

There is a negative proof of the value of Latin: No one seems to boast of not knowing it.

If you don't like the consequences of change then you have chosen to stay the same.

I am mortified to be told that in the United States of America the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry and of criminal inquiry too.

Everyone is just making the choices they think will help them get by.

I never used to sleep much. I think we all go through a bit of a time like that where we rage about. If we don't, I don't think you've ever really lived.

You will never be completely free from risk if you're free. The only time you can be free from risk is when you're in prison.

I think the British people have a strong sense of what is fair.

When you walk through that door of opportunity you don't slam it shut behind you.

I used to sit when I was a kid, from 14 or 15 on, with a book or a paper or a magazine in front of a mirror and teach myself to speak with a more straight mouth, so it wasn't so pronounced.

The world is full of dumb paperwork.

There are some power-abusing, corrupt monsters in our federal government that despise me because I have the audacity to speak the truth.