History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him.

It's not easy to diagnose because depending where the endometrial deposits are, the symptoms can be quite different. It's an unrecognized problem among teenage girls, and it's something that every young woman who has painful menstruation should be aware of... It's a condition that is curable if it's caught early. If not, if it's allowed to run on, it can cause infertility, and it can really, really mess up your life.

But an experienced reader is also a self-aware and critical reader. I can't remember ever reading a story without judging it.

When people begin to talk about "our island story" my hackles rise. It is deluded and conservative.

Imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you.

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

A statute is written to entrap meaning, a poem to escape it.