Real Reading Is A Lonely Activity.

I Think The Greek New Testament Is The Strongest And Most Successful Misreading Of A Great Prior Text In The Entire History Of Influence.

A Superb And Dreadfully Moving Account Of The Glory And Subsequent Murder By The Romanians Of The Jewish City In Odessa. . . . Odessa Is Both Celebration And Lament And Equally Impressive As Both.

What Matters In Literature In The End Is Surely The Idiosyncratic, The Individual, The Flavor Or The Color Of A Particular Human Suffering.

We Read, Frequently If Not Unknowingly, In Search Of A Mind More Original Than Our Own.

Reading The Very Best Writers—let Us Say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is Not Going To Make Us Better Citizens. Art Is Perfectly Useless, According To The Sublime Oscar Wilde, Who Was Right About Everything. He Also Told Us That All Bad Poetry Is Sincere. Had I The Power To Do So, I Would Command That These Words Be Engraved Above Every Gate At Every University, So That Each Student Might Ponder The Splendor Of The Insight.