Hard work makes easy reading or, at least, easier reading.

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

When I was a graduate student, the leading spirits at Harvard were interested in the history of ideas.

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

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

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

Hard work makes easy reading or, at least, easier reading.