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

I suppose everybody does get attached to characters whether in movies or in stories, but I think that's part of the reason you get involved with literature is because there's somebody that grabs you about it and then you want to figure out why.

Literature is being taught as though it were only political medicine or political poison-a view that is not only illiberal but illiterate.

Just in higher education alone, more people go to college now, by enormous amounts, than went to college in the '50's and '60's. So that represents a whole new literate public that's a consumer of literature, of news, of print, of, you know, opinion. And that's a bigger audience and much more diverse audience than it used to be.

My own view is that the general education curriculum that a college picks has to be appropriate for the kind of student body that it has.

You have to have students wanting to take the courses, otherwise you're not going, they're not going to be very effective.

Cognitive science is a rapidly developing area, so it could be that there are some surprises around the corner. That does seem to be kind of where the trend line is leading.