When One Emphasizes, As Jacques Derrida Once

Cynicism And Naivety Lie Cheek By Jowl In The American Imagination; If The United States Is One Of The Most Venal Nations On Earth, It Is Also One Of The Most Earnestly Idealistic.

The Present Is Only Understandable Through The Past, With Which It Forms A Living Continuity; And The Past Is Always Grasped From Our Own Partial Viewpoint Within The Present.

If History Moves Forward, Knowledge Of It Travels Backwards, So That In Writing Of Our Own Recent Past We Are Continually Meeting Ourselves Coming The Other Way.

Evil May Be 'unscientific' But So Is A Song Or A Smile.

With Fiction, You Can Talk About Plot, Character And Narrative, Whereas A Poem Brings Home The Fact That Everything That Happens In A Work Of Literature Happens In Terms Of Language. And This Is Daunting Stuff To Deal With.