“No word floats without an anchoring connection within an overall structure.”

“...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.”

“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.”

“People write or speak sentences in order to produce an effect, and the success of a sentence is measured by the degree to which the desired effect has been achieved.”

“The purpose of a good education is to show you that there are three sides to a two-sided story.”

“This is what language does: organize the world into manageable, and in some sense artificial, units that can then be inhabited and manipulated.”