In short, it became possible - never easy, but possible - in the poet Auden's phrase to find the mortal world enough.

The first and perhaps the most important requirement for a successful writing performance - and writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dancing a jig - is to understand the nature of the occasion.

Literate households in the 17th century would have had the Bible, John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress," and a couple of other books. Shakespeare plays were cheap, so you could buy those, but a folio cost a pound, which was an incredible amount of money then.

I believe that it is a whole lifetime of work on Shakespeare's part that enabled him to do what he did. But the question is how you can explain this whole lifetime in such a way to make it accessible and available to us, to me.

Art always penetrates the particular fissures in one's psychic life.

I was in Venice teaching, so I reread Henry James's "The Wings of the Dove." I love James.

In short, it became possible - never easy, but possible - in the poet Auden's phrase to find the mortal world enough.