The difference between being Achilles and almost being Achilles is the difference between living and dying.

A witty and informative professor posits that more authors do not choose titles borrowed from Shakespeare's sonnets and plays for the reason some people claim not to have partners: "All the good ones are taken."

Ghosts and vampires are never only about ghosts and vampires.

The difference between being Achilles and almost being Achilles is the difference between living and dying.

Don't wait for writers to be dead to be read; the living ones can use the money.

Real people are made out of a whole lot of things-flesh, bone, blood, nerves, stuff like that. Literary people are made out of words.

The novels we read allow us to encounter possible persons, visions of ourselves that we would never see, never permit ourselves to become, in places we can never go and might not care to, while assuring that we get to return home again.