To read is to surrender oneself to an endless displacement of curiosity and desire from one sentence to another

Universities are the cathedrals of the modern age. They shouldn't have to justify their existence by utilitarian criteria.

Life, after all, should go forwards, not backwards.

Every decoding is another encoding.

Information is the religion of the modern world.

Morris read through the letter. Was it a shade too fulsome? No, that was another law of academic life: it is impossible to be excessive in flattery of one's peers.

I'm a bit of a deconstructionist myself. It's kind of exciting - the last intellectual thrill left. Like sawing through the branch you're sitting on.

It's the only thing that keeps me going these days, travelling. Changes of scene, changes of faces

I respect a man who can recognize a quotation. It's a dying art.

Perhaps that's what we're all looking for - desire undiluted by habit.

It was Adam Appleby's misfortune that at the moment of awakening from sleep his consciousness was immediately flooded with everything he least wanted to think about

We prefer to go deformed and distorted all our lives rather than not resemble the portrait of ourselves which we ourselves have first drawn. It’s absurd. We run the risk of warping what’s best in us

There's a smile on my face for the whole human race.

Every time I say thanks or thank you to a random person they blush and say you're welcome.

I really prize and love great painting. It's so out of date now. It's slightly come back in.

The best evidence of our having the truth is our walking in the truth.

When there is firm conquest over covetousness, they who have conquered it wake up to the how and why of life.

What's wrong with technology is that it's not connected in any real way with matters of the spirit and of the heart. And so it does blind, ugly things quite by accident and gets hated for that.

No one really buys records anymore. You can look at sales and do that math real quick. Unfortunately, it's fast food in the music industry. People don't ingest full records anymore.

sacrifice' was often a cloak for many actions that did not always stem from the highest motives.

I am working to make sure we don't only protect the environment, we also improve governance.