If, in the Judaic perception, the language of the Adamic was that of love, the grammars of fallen man are those of the legal code.

The immense majority of human biographies are a gray transit between domestic spasm and oblivion.

It took 10 months for me to learn to tie a lace; I must have howled with rage and frustration. But one day I could tie my laces. That no one can take from you. I profoundly distrust the pedagogy of ease.

To shoot a man because one disagrees with his interpretation of Darwin or Hegel is a sinister tribute to the supremacy of ideas in human affairs -- but a tribute nevertheless.

The intellectual is, quite simply, a human being who has a pencil in his or her hand when reading a book.

The age of the book is almost gone.

It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.