Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.

We come away from the tragedies of [William] Shakespeare with a profound sense of having encountered reality in its most pristine form - yet the art-work is elaborately artificial, the very genre of tragedy in poetry an anti-naturalist perspective.

My students often say, "My roommate read this story and really liked it", and it's hard to convince them that there are things wrong with it. I say, "well, people who love you want you to be happy. But I'm your professor and I'm supposed to be teaching you something."

Her visits to her former hometown were infrequent and often painful. Pilgrimages fueled by the tepid oxygen of family duty, unease, guilt. The more Esther loved her parents, the more helpless she felt, as they aged, to protect them from harm. A moral coward, she kept her distance.

She wasn't in love but she would love him, if that would save her.

Maybe, love is always forgiveness, to a degree.

To be Jewish is to be specifically identified with a history. And if you're not aware of that when you're a child, the whole tradition is lost.