If time is a staircase, reality is a Slinky. Decades can be parsed. Television, frequently accused of destabilizing life, is actually what stitches the segments together.

Quotable quotes are coins rubbed smooth by circulation.

We have much wisdom to gain by learning to understand other people's cultures and permitting ourselves to accept that there is more than one version of reality.

Writers are not mere copyists of language; they are polishers, embellishers, perfecters. They spend hours getting the timing right so that what they write sounds completely unrehearsed.

I don't think the same curriculum fits every student body.

One of the oddities about responses that you get to what you write, if you get a fair number of them, is that people have very different ideas of what you said.

One of the good things about the profession of being a professor, is that you also have time to do what interests you and what you care about or what you're good at.

I don't really usually push an agenda, and I don't feel that my main job is to persuade people of something. My main job is to help them think about something.

There are limits, after all, to the idea of limits.

Obviously input is helpful to faculty in trying to come up with a curriculum, but ultimately it's the faculty's job to know what students need to know. Make a decision about it and present it.

Literature is being taught as though it were only political medicine or political poison-a view that is not only illiberal but illiterate.

Don't take life too seriously. Punch it in the face when it needs a good hit. Laugh at it.

Do not give your haters the gratification, It means you will never let yourself down.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.

About Anna Faktorovich's "Romances of George Sand": “What a read! Not lacking in action and very imaginative.

Take your pleasure seriously.

You can just sit in here, impervious and invisible. So invisible you might even forget yourself.

No way to get away. No way to get away. Little change to sneak away... insanity.

For a musician, music is the best way to unite with God.

HIV is certainly character-building. It's made me see all of the shallow things we cling to, like ego and vanity. Of course, I'd rather have a few more T-cells and a little less character.

What you need, what you deserve, is a guy who adores you for what you are. Who doesn't see you as a project, but a prize. you know?