It's a terrible poison, writing.

Think of this - that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.

I don't only write about English literature; I also write about chaos theory and... ants. I can understand ants.

The individual appears for an instant, joins the community of thought, modifies it and dies; but the species, that dies not, reaps the fruit of his ephemeral existence.

An odd phrase, "by heart," he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream.

Literary critics make natural detectives.

I know that part of the reason I read Tolkien when I'm ill is that there is an almost total absence of sexuality in his world, which is restful.