John Updike is always fun. And one of my former students, Tom Pynchon. And Harold Bloom, another former student..

We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity. The appeal of literature is that it is so thoroughly a human thing — by, for and a….

If you learn one thing from having lived through decades of changing views, it is that all predictions are necessarily false..

At first, students tend to freeze at the first effort. The breakthrough comes when they realize that they can make it better - can identify what thei….

It's amazing how, age after age, in country after country, and in all languages, Shakespeare emerges as incomparable..

I think the hardest thing to teach a student is that what he or she puts down on paper is changeable. It's not the final thing, it's the first thing,….

The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves..

Key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions..

If you don't set your writing - teaching - at a level that makes them stretch, they are never going to develop their intellectual muscle..

If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem..

We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity..

When something startlingly new comes up, young people, especially, seize it. You can't complain about that. I think its heyday has passed, but it's h….

Life without literature is a life reduced to penury..

Life without literature is a life reduced to penury. It expands you in every way. It illuminates what you’re doing. It shows you possibilities you ha….

The survival of artistic modes in which we recognize ourselves, identify ourselves and place ourselves will survive as long as humanity survives..

When I was a graduate student, the leading spirits at Harvard were interested in the history of ideas..

Hard work makes easy reading or, at least, easier reading..

We worked on solving the problem of voice communications in a noisy military environment. We established military codes that are highly audible and i….

I think most of the things I published have been published out of desperation, not because they were perfected..