One should indeed read Pope with his notes available, in the Twickenham edition possibly, to see what a vast amount he did understand about Homer.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

I think it was lucky that during most of the work on the Odyssey I lived on Homer's sea in houses that were, in one case, shaken by the impact of the Mediterranean winter storms on the rocks below.

Is encouragement what the poet needs? Open question. Maybe he needs discouragement. In fact, quite a few of them need more discouragement, the most discouragement possible.

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story

The invention of Bob Dylan with his guitar belongs in its way to the same kind of tradition of something meant to be heard, as the songs of Homer.

Yes, and there were changes of light on landscapes and changes of direction of the wind and the force of the wind and weather. That whole scene is too important in Homer to neglect.

In fact, eloquence in English will inevitably make use of the Latin element in our vocabulary.

The question is how to bring a work of imagination out of one language that was just as taken-for-granted by the persons who used it as our language is by ourselves. Nothing strange about it.

I think that everyone who took part has always been grateful for it.

Of course the other and more serious way in which it all happens is that one finds in poems and language some quality one appropriates for oneself and wishes to reproduce.

Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness.

Most of my girlfriends are sent by the Devil and seem genuinely bemused when I do not succumb to their powers.

The rules of the world are changing. It is time for the rules of teaching and teachers' work to change with them.

You almost can't wait too long [to get married]. The longer you wait, the better off you are going to be. And the happier your kids are going to be, and the happier a mom you are going to be.

There's enough Ferraris here to eat a plate of spaghetti.

We don't have to start all over again and try to keep the slate clean. There is no more slate.

I feel a little like Rod Tidwell from Jerry Maguire

There's something about [pain] that excites me. If I'm feeling really awful about something, it's because I haven't experienced it before. There's something I need to learn from it.

So. You’re saying my sister’s dressed like a prostitute

She had caprices of a marvellous unexpectedness, and how is any one to imitate a caprice?