When something does not insist on being noticed, when we aren't grabbed by the collar or struck on the skull by a presence or an event, we take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.

Why do men carry guns and build prison camps, when the nurturing earth is made for freedom?

Much of the academy on the humanities side, English departments in particular, no longer write what can pass for normal English.

What was lost in the European cataclysm was not only the Jewish past--the whole life of a civilization--but also a major share ofthe Jewish future.... [ellipsis in source] It was not only the intellect of a people in its prime that was excised, but the treasure of a people in its potential.

History ... isn't simply what has happened. It's a judgment on what has happened.

If we had to say what writing is, we would have to define it essentially as an act of courage.

What we think we are surely going to do, we don't do; and what we never intended to do, we may one day notice that we have done, and done, and done.