The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon that is better than a spoon... The book has been thoroughly tested, and it's very hard to see how it could be improved on for its current purposes.

I think every professor and writer is in some way an exhibitionist because his or her normal activity is a theatrical one. When you give a lesson the situation is the same as writing a book. You have to capture the attention, the complicity of your audience.

It was awkward, revisiting a world you have never seen before: like coming home, after a long journey, to someone else’s house.

Naturally, everything depends on one's background books and on what one is looking for.

Beauty has never been absolute and immutable but has taken on different aspects depending on the historical period and the country

I am not on Facebook and on Twitter because the purpose of my life is to avoid messages. I receive too many messages from the world, and so I try to avoid that.

Our most noted satirists are true columnists and their opinions can be worth more than any well-documented exposé.