In the end, the humanities can only be defended by stressing how indispensable they are; and this means insisting on their vital role in the whole business of academic learning, rather than protesting that, like some poor relation, they don't cost much to be housed.

Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur Thou still unravished bride of quietness, then I am instantly aware that I am in the presence of the literary.

After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was.

You've got to have a sense of different audiences. I'm a kind of performer manque - I come from a long line of failed actors!

Nothing in human life is inherently private.

The study of history and philosophy, accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for lawyers and engineers as well as for those who study in arts faculties.

Today, nostalgia is almost as unacceptable as racism.