Never be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject.

I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.

We are the species that clamors to be lied to.

Ideas brush past fleeting and insubstantial as moths. But I let them go, I don't want them. What I want is a voice.

The other book that I worry no one reads anymore is James Joyce's Ulysses. It's not easy, but every page is wonderful and repays the effort. I started reading it in high school, but I wasn't really able to grasp it. Then I read it in college. I once spent six weeks in a graduate seminar reading it. It takes that long. That's the problem. No one reads that way anymore. People may spend a week with a book, but not six.

I am always reading or thinking about reading.

Literature, art, like civilization itself, are only accidents.