“If Freud turns to literature to describe traumatic experience, it is because literature, like psychoanalysis, is interested in the complex relation between knowing and not knowing, and it is at this specific point at which knowing and not knowing intersect that the psychoanalytic theory of traumatic experience and the language of literature meet.”

“I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.”

“Literature presents you with alternate mappings of the human experience. You see that the experiences of other people and other cultures are as rich, coherent, and troubled as your own experiences. They are as beset with suffering as yours. Literature is a kind of legitimate voyeurism through the keyhole of language where you really come to know other people's lives--their anguish, their loves, their passions. Often you discover that once you dive into those lives and get below the surface, the veneer, there is a real closeness.”

“I know it is the itch between the legs which causes everything-Wars, Religions, Marriages, Elections, Families, Globalization, Trade, Literature, Science, and for me Philosophy.”

“I don't see how the study of language and literature can be separated from the question of free speech, which we all know is fundamental to our society. [p.92]”

“Personal experience is the basis of all real literature.”