We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity.

The survival of artistic modes in which we recognize ourselves, identify ourselves and place ourselves will survive as long as humanity survives.

It's amazing how, age after age, in country after country, and in all languages, Shakespeare emerges as incomparable.

The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves.

John Updike is always fun. And one of my former students, Tom Pynchon. And Harold Bloom, another former student.

We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity.

When something startlingly new comes up, young people, especially, seize it. You can't complain about that. I think its heyday has passed, but it's had an effect and will continue to have an effect.