The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less.

It is always and forever the same struggle: to perceive somehow our own complicity with evil is a horror not to be borne. ... much more reassuring to see the w…

Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author.

The job is to ask questions - it always was - and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility.

No theory is good unless it permits, not rest, but the greatest work. No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond.

The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.

I don't really know what 'intellectual' means, but if it means you've got a desire to learn, you've got a desire to look for things that haven't been presented…