“Quality and consistency of conjecture are one good measure of the ambition and the inwardness of any literary biography. The biographer is master of the archive, but also and equally master of the subjunctive mood, of un-certainty, of non-factuality.”

“Irony cleans away all those secret stains. Irony is the path that leads safely back to official realities.”

“Purity in body and heart May please some--as for me, I make no boast. For, as you know, no master of a household Has all of his utensils made of gold; Some are wood, and yet they are of use.”

“It is common knowledge that Belle women make hard men melt like butter in a pan. They are equally adept at reversing the process.”

“True greatness is measured by how much freedom you give to others, not by how much you can coerce others to do what you want.”

“The ability to inspire rather than enforce loyalty is a critical quality of leadership.”

“To attempt to describe how music pervades and flavors a life feels a little like an invasion of privacy, even if the privacy is my own. Listening to music,...is finally the most inward of acts--so inward that even language, even the language of thought, can come to seem intrusive...After all these procedures the unbreachable mysteriousness of music remains intact. The book can never be more than an interruption. Afterward, the listening begins again, to generate, in turn, other and completely different books.”