Whatever (its) virtues, (the) writing explores the culture of work but marginalizes work itself.

It's not that I don't like people. It's just that when I'm in the company of others - even my nearest and dearest - there always comes a moment when I'd rather be reading a book.

The danger in reviewing and teaching literature for a living (is) you can develop a kind of knee-jerk superiority to the material you're "decoding

I think the influence of books is neither direct and more predictable. Books themselves are too unruly, and so are readers.

The child who gets lost in a book can emerge from the experience a changeling.

It's a gift of tranquility when your adult desires mesh with your childhood background. I don't quite know why mine didn't, although I think books, again, are partly to blame.

Meekly swallowing and assimilating the customs of the more powerful has always been a strategy by which the less powerful have tried to fit in.

Those straight-spined parishioners could justify their exhibitionism by telling themselves that they were setting an example, even educating the rest of us.

Reading, my earliest refuge in the unknown world, made me want to venture into it.

One of the many drawbacks of this "I teach what I am" approach is that it stifles classroom discussion. Any disagreement with the professor's expertise comes off as an ad hominem attack.

Generations of readers, bored with their own alienating, repetitious jobs, have been mesmerized by Crusoe's essential, civilization-building chores.

You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.

Discover your calling and let go of the past

I also argued before the war that the administration was underestimating Arab nationalism and Iraqi nationalism, that it was not going to be as easy to rule Iraq as they thought.

I am who I am. In the end, I feel that what I'm accountable for is doing a good job as a football coach.

The rainbow bursts like magic on mine eyes! In hues of ancient promise there imprest.

Great is his faith who dares believe his own eyes.

It is the principle of sin, rebellion against God and His truth which has brought about birth defects and other destructive natural occurrences.

Our eagerness for worldly activity kills in us the sense of spiritual awe

I think most art comes out of poverty and hard times.