“And the only sign of life is the ticking of the pen, introducing characters to memory like old friends.”

“I got a golden handshake that nearly broke my arm I left the ranks of shuffling graveyard people I got rust upon my hands from the padlocked factory gates Silent chimneys provide the silent steeples”

“Justification, after all, confers value on an activity from a perspective outside its performance. An activity that cannot be justified is an activity that refuses to regard itself as instrumental to some larger good. The humanities are their own good. There is nothing more to say, and anything that is said – even when it takes the form of Kronman’s inspiring cadences – diminishes the object of its supposed praise.”

“If our country is worth dying for in time of war let us resolve that it is truly worth living for in time of peace. ”

“The beautiful unruliness of literature is what makes it so much fun to wander through: you read Jane Austen and you say, oh, that is IT. And then you turn around and read Sterne, and you say, Man, that is IT. And then you wander across a century or so, and you run into Kafka, or Calvino, or Cortazar, and you say, well that is IT. And then you stroll through what Updike called the grottos of Ulysses, and after that you consort with Baldwin or Welty or Spencer, or Morrison, or Bellow or Fitzgerald and then back to W. Shakespeare, Esq; the champ, and all the time you feel the excitement of being in the presence of IT. And when you yourself spend the good time writing, you are not different in kind than any of these people, you are part of that miracle of human invention. So get to work. Get on with IT, no matter how difficult IT is. Every single gesture, every single stumble, every single uninspired-feeling hour, is worth IT." Richard Bausch”

“...words so precisely placed that in combination with other words, also precisely placed, they carve out a shape in space and time.”

“Before the words slide into their slots, they are just discrete items, pointing everywhere and nowhere.”