If ideas are what feed serious literature and arresting language, who today is writing a novel of ideas (which can often mean comedy)? I think of Joshua Cohen. Who else?

Real apprenticeship is ultimately always to the self.

Language makes culture, and we make a rotten culture when we abuse words.

It is true that money attracts; but much money repels.

a. Critics: people who make monuments out of books. b. Biographers: people who make books out of monuments. c. Poets: people who raze monuments. d. Publishers: people who sell rubble. e. Readers: people who buy it.

He who cries, 'What do I care about universality? I only know what is in me,' does not know even that.

Traveling is seeing; it is the implicit that we travel by.