He is no true reader who has not experienced the reproachful fascination of the great shelves of unread books, of the libraries at night of which Borges is the fabulist. He is no reader who has not heard, in his inward ear, the call of the hundreds of thousands, of the millions of volumes which stand in the stacks of the British Library asking to be read. For there is in each book a gamble against oblivion, a wager against silence, which can be won only when the book is opened again (but in contrast to man, the book can wait centuries for the hazard of resurrection.)

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

If there is a chronic infirmity by which every teacher ought to be afflicted, it is, indeed, hope.

The letter kills the spirit. The written text is mute in the face of responding challenge. It does not admit of inward growth and correction. Text subverts the absolutely vital role of memory.

the calling of the teacher. There is no craft more privileged. To awaken in another human being powers, dreams beyond one’s own; to induce in others a love for that which one loves; to make of one’s inward present their future; that is a threefold adventure like no other.

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

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.