“The first thing to say about Finnegans Wake is that it is, in an important sense, unreadable.”

“You have to distinguish between things that seemed odd when they were new but are now quite familiar, such as Ibsen and Wagner, and things that seemed crazy when they were new and seem crazy now, like 'Finnegans Wake' and Picasso.”

“I think the most important thing about music is the sense of escape.”

“It is not important to have said a thing first, or best - or even most interestingly. What is important is to say it on the right occasion.”

“It was the night that the power went out in Berkeley that he'd finished Joyce's Finnegan's Wake by the light of a candle. Sometimes you need to be forced to study what's right in front of you.”

“Raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place. It's the most important thing that happens, and it's the culmination of all the tools and language and social structure that has evolved.”