We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity. The appeal of literature is that it is so thoroughly a human thing — by, for and about human beings. If you lose that focus, you obviate the source of the power and permanence of literature.

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

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

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.

If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.

If you learn one thing from having lived through decades of changing views, it is that all predictions are necessarily false.