And what is 'art'? - a firestorm rushing through Time, arising from no visible source and conforming to no principles of logic or causality.

the art of reading hardly differs from the art of writing, in that its most intense pleasures and pains must remains private, and cannot be communicated to others.

Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.

Food doesn't exist, but can only be invented. And reinvented.

The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt.

Anyone who teaches knows that you don't really experience a text until you've taught it, in loving detail, with an intelligent and responsive class.

Not to be alone. To be spared the possibility of knowing oneself, in aloneness.