Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs.

The reading eye must do the work to make them live, and so it did, again and again, never the same life twice, as the artist had intended.

There is a peculiar aesthetic pleasure in constructing the form of a syllabus, or a book of essays, or a course of lectures. Visions and shadows of people and ideas can be arranged and rearranged like stained-glass pieces in a window, or chessmen on a board.

I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity.

I'm more interested in books than people, and I always expect everybody else to be, but they're not.

Dorothy was in that state human beings passed through at the beginning of a love affair, in which they desire to say anything and everything to the beloved, to the alter ego, before they have learned what the real Other can and can't understand, can and can't accept.

I watch a lot of sport on television. I only watch certain sports, and I only watch them live - I don't think I've ever been able to watch a replay of a match or game of which the result was already decided. I feel bound to cheat and look up what can be looked up.