Public circulation is what renders something a quotation. It's quotable because it's been quoted, and its having been quoted gives it authority.

Obviously input is helpful to faculty in trying to come up with a curriculum, but ultimately it's the faculty's job to know what students need to know. Make a decision about it and present it.

Basically what you want in any profession - I would say the same thing if I were a lawyer or a doctor - is you want bright undergraduates to look at your profession as something they would be interested in getting into.

The short story is not as restrictive as the sonnet, but, of all the literary forms, it is possibly the most single-minded. ...at the end there has to be the literary equivalent of the magician's puff of smoke, an outcome that is both startling and anticipated.

If time is a staircase, reality is a Slinky. Decades can be parsed. Television, frequently accused of destabilizing life, is actually what stitches the segments together.

I don't really usually push an agenda, and I don't feel that my main job is to persuade people of something. My main job is to help them think about something.

There are limits, after all, to the idea of limits.