“The study of the past is the main portal through which culture is acquired.”

“The English philosopher Michael Oakeshott notes that one of the signs of being cold today is that one knows what one doesn't have to know.”

“For reasons no one has yet explained, the Internet is at once riveting and a great killer of concentration.”

“The acquisition of culture requires repose, sitting quietly in a room with a book, or alone with one's thoughts even any crowded concert or art museum.”

“Vladimir Nabokov, contemning readers who "identified" with characters in fiction, remarked that the best readers identify with the artist.”

“Conservatives and those on the right are usually willing to settle for thinking themselves correct on political issues; those on the left have always needed to feel not so much that they are correc...”

“There are many things that make a man irritable when he arrives home from work in the evening and a sensible wife will usually notice the storm-signals and will leave him alone until he simmers down.”

“Oblivion, she thought. That was the world she lived in. It was what they should name some countries, towns, and places.”

“A lot of men wouldn't like being called a romantic. It's not macho enough.'Quite often men are fools.”

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.”

“When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women”

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”