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.

My father loved poetry and music. But deep in himself he thought teaching the finest thing a person could do.

It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past. Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.

To ask larger questions is to risk getting things wrong. Not to ask them at all is to constrain the life of understanding

Literature and the arts are also criticism in a more particular and practical sense. They embody an expository reflection on, a value judgement of, the inheritance and context to which they pertain.

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.

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