“This pain is comfort. It is the solace of physicality, like a touch.”

“Doing nothing was as honourable as any available course of action. Think of Hamlet, think of Job, think of Jesus before Pilate.”

“Suffering is inevitable. It is part of the human condition. It is written in the human script.”

“I may not be free, but Im not about to surrender the illusion of choice.”

“The future is certain. It is just not known.”

“I stare out at the real world projected on the windows”

“Your life experience is a moving picture, of which you are writer, director, performer, producer and critic.”

“I dont want to be a critic of the world. I want to encourage it.”

“What the critic as a teacher of language tries to teach is not an elegant accomplishment, but the means of conscious life. Literary education should lead not merely to the admiration of great liter...”

“The pleasure of criticizing takes away from us the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things.”

“But instead of spending our lives running towards our dreams, we are often running away from a fear of failure or a fear of criticism.”

“The ugliest government is the one which is spreading fear to its own people! The finest government is the one which encourages its own people to criticize the government harshly.”

“Lambhood and tigerishness may be found in either gender, and in the same individual at different times.”

“There was and still is a tremendous fear that poor and working-class Americans might one day come to understand where their political interests reside. Personally, I think the elites worry too much...”

“Metaphysics... is nothing but the inventory of all we possess through pure reason, ordered systematically. Nothing here can escape us, because what reason brings forth entirely out of itself cannot...”