The idea of Herman Melville in a writing class is always distressing to me.

Everyone wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable.

The most beautiful prose paragraph yet written by any American.

We read, frequently if not unknowingly, in search of a mind more original than our own.

I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike

It is hard to go on living without some hope of encountering the extraordinary.

Shakespeare is the true multicultural author. He exists in all languages. He is put on the stage everywhere. Everyone feels that they are represented by him on the stage.

At our present bad moment, we need above all to recover our sense of literary individuality and of poetic autonomy.

Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.

Reading well is one of the greatest pleasures that solitude can afford you.

The art and passion of reading well and deeply is waning, but [Jane] Austen still inspires people to become fanatical readers.

If you are uncomfortable with any law or procedure, propose a motion for its amendment. Until it is amended, going against it for whatever purpose automatically makes one a rebel

The impact of any particular writer on your own work is hard to discern.

Do what you really want to do. That's why God put you on this earth.

It's very hard to accept that stoning still exists in the world today.

I make no apologies for being a huge fan of radio songs.

Jessica Alba is one of my favorites. ... I love her so much. I know she's married now, but I would love to take her out to dinner one day, or maybe even lunch. I love that girl for some reason.

I was too broke to buy a guitar so I more borrowed guitars from friends.

If it takes seven days to make a living, you ought to be doing something else.

The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born.

Songs are the pulse of a nation's heart. A fever chart of its health.