Good Writing Is Always New.

I Think There Are A Lot More Important Things Than Art In The World. But Not To Me.

There Is A Peculiar Aesthetic Pleasure In Constructing The Form Of A Syllabus, Or A Book Of Essays, Or A Course Of Lectures. Visions And Shadows Of People And Ideas Can Be Arranged And Rearranged Like Stained-glass Pieces In A Window, Or Chessmen On A Board.

Once You Get Older, People Stop Listening To What You Say. It's Very Agreeable Once You Get Used To It.

I'm More Interested In Books Than People, And I Always Expect Everybody Else To Be, But They're Not.

Narration Is As Much A Part Of Human Nature As Breath And The Circulation Of The Blood.... Storytelling Is Intrinsic To Biological Time, Which We Cannot Escape. Life, Pascal Said, Is Like Living In A Prison From Which Every Day Fellow Prisoners Are Taken Away To Be Executed. We Are All, Like Scheherazade, Under Sentence Of Death, And We All Think Of Our Lives As Narratives, With Beginnings, Middles And Ends.