The art and passion of reading well and deeply is waning, but [Jane] Austen still inspires people to become fanatical readers.

There is no method except yourself.

I think the Greek New Testament is the strongest and most successful misreading of a great prior text in the entire history of influence.

We all fear loneliness, madness, dying. Shakespeare and Walt Whitman, Leopardi and Hart Crane will not cure those fears. And yet these poets bring us fire and light.

Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention.

We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space, time, imperfect sympathies, and all the sorrows of familial and passional life.

More even than Southern Presbyterians and Southern Methodists, the Baptists provided the great mass of Confederate enlisted men.