I think in general there's no point in going into a field like English literature if you're not going to have fun with it.

For the kind of places I've written for and the kind of writing that I've done, the general way to think about your audience is to think about somebody who's like yourself, but in a completely different discipline.

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.

I'm not one of the people who has a kind of scholarly hat and writes in a certain way for an academic audience and then puts on a public intellectual hat and writes a different way for a different kind of readership. I generally write the way I write, no matter what and it seems to have worked for me.

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

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.

Quotable quotes are coins rubbed smooth by circulation.