[People in 1600s] didn't have many books. They would have been staggered by the personal libraries we have today, because books back then were incredibly expensive.

Now a Protestant confronting a Catholic ghost is exactly Shakespeare's way of grappling with what was not simply a general social problem but one lived out in his own life.

My father who in this case was an obsessive life-long storyteller, and by a very peculiar trick of my father's. My father would tell a very, very long story, and the punch line would be in Yiddish.

First of all, there was a volcano of words, an eruption of words that Shakespeare had never used before that had never been used in the English language before. It's astonishing. It pours out of him.

One of my favorite writers is Michel de Montaigne. My wife gave me a beautiful 17th-century edition of Montaigne's essays translated by John Florio. That's probably my most precious possession.

Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity.

The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.

I believe that nothing comes of nothing, even in Shakespeare. I wanted to know where he got the matter he was working with and what he did with that matter.

No special writing rituals. And my desk is usually cluttered.

What I wanted to do was to get that sense of being in touch with this lost world while holding onto what draws readers and audiences there in the first place.

I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.

When people get into their 30s plus "boyfriend" sounds weird...if you really think about it. Instead, I think we should universally start using the term "manfriend" or "snookie bookie cuddles pie".

I don't think [price] reflects if the work is good or bad.A good artist shouldn't be nervous about that.

Objects are made to be completed by the human mind.

If you need all the answers to trust God, you are not really trusting God.

The time to read is any time: no apparatus, no appointment of time and place, is necessary.

I believe that the school must represent present life - life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the play-ground.

To my wife 'I told you I was sick'.

That was the first time I've drawn anything for seven years. I feel like I had been held underwater, and someone finally reached down and pulled my head up so I could breathe.

Stop hoping, start believing.

There are things that can only be said with a good string of cussing. I'm definitely fond of a few choice words. They say things that nothing else can say. Gotta love it.