Literary critics, like a herd of cows or a school of fish, always face in the same direction, obeying that love for unity that every critic requires.

Readers, not critics, are the people who determine a book's eventual fate.

When the situation is desperate, it is too late to be serious. Be playful.

Those art lovers who pride themselves mostly on *taste* usually possess no other talent.

Tofu and futons. The adepts of Orientalism seem to spend most of their lives reclining. They can't quite summon the energy to crawl up onto a chair. Even their Yogic exercises are carried out in a prone or sitting position.

Alaska is our biggest, buggiest, boggiest state. Texas remains our largest unfrozen state. But mountainous Utah, if ironed out flat, would take up more space on a map than either.

The world of employer and employee, like that of master and slave, debases both.