I never intended to be a teacher. I just like going to school and learning things.

Poetry and fiction have grieved for a century now over the loss of some vitality which they think they see in a past from which we are by now irrevocably alienated.

There's nothing like being a soldier for confidence or learning your limits or enduring utter humiliation.

The difference between the Parthenon and the World Trade Center, between a French wine glass and a German beer mug, between Bach and John Philip Sousa, between Sophocles and Shakespeare, between a bicycle and a horse, though explicable by historical moment, necessity, and destiny, is before all a difference of imagination.

Imagination is like the drunk man who lost his watch and must get drunk again to find it.