I have students who are now in chairs in five continents. They invite me to their inaugurals. A tremendous reward.

I believe that a work of art, like metaphors in language, can ask the most serious, difficult questions in a way which really makes the readers answer for themselves; that the work of art far more than an essay or a tract involves the reader, challenges him directly and brings him into the argument.

To be a European is to try to negotiate morally, intellectually and existentially the opposing statements and praxis of the city of Socrates and the city of Isaiah.

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

Men are accomplices to that which leaves them indifferent.

The ordinary man casts a shadow in a way we do not quite understand. The man of genius casts light.

Tragedy speaks not of secular dilemmas which may be resolved by rational innovation, but of the unalterable bias toward inhumanity and destruction in the drift of the world.