“Chomsky's writings are "classics" in Mark Twain's sense: something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”

“Babies are born with the instinct to speak, the way spiders are born with the instinct to spin webs. You don’t need to train babies to speak; they just do. But reading is different.”

“The general valorization of reason and evidence, scrutiny of social arrangements, open discourse and a reasonable scepticism have all been very healthy developments. The attempts to push them back —from both the right and the left wing and for different reasons, but denigrating secular reason, science, objectivity, free speech—I think bring dangers.”

“Chomsky is a pencil-and-paper theoretician who wouldn't know Jabba the Hutt from the Cookie Monster,”

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

“The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.”

“I want to make you laugh or cry when you read a story . . .or do both at the same time. I want your heart, in other words. If you want to learn something, go to school.”