He was the perfect autodidact. He wanted to know it all.

Wilson was not, in the academic sense, a scholar or historian. He was an enormous reader, one of those readers who are perpetually on the scent from book to bo…

Wilson is not like other critics; some critics are boring even when they are original; he fascinates even when he is wrong.

He was, as painted, aristocratic, beyond any writer I've met, but in a Jeffersonian-American way that brooked no artificial distinctions. There was no cheap wa…

When it came to formal classes, I was a slacker. But I've always been a diligent autodidact and can teach myself virtually any subject - if I have a serious in…

I said I liked being half-educated; you were so much more surprised at everything when you were ignorant.

There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about.