"When something startlingly new comes up, young people, especially, seize it. You can't complain about that. I think its heyday has passed, but it's had an effect and will continue to have an effect."

"When I was a graduate student, the leading spirits at Harvard were interested in the history of ideas."

"We worked on solving the problem of voice communications in a noisy military environment. We established military codes that are highly audible and invented selection tests for personnel who had a superior ability to recognize sound in a noisy background."

"John Updike is always fun. And one of my former students, Tom Pynchon. And Harold Bloom, another former student."

"Everything was going my way. I was happily marching into the history books. Then it all just fell apart."

"Thus one memory follows another until the waves dash together over our heads, and a deep sigh swells the breast, which warns us that we have forgotten to breathe in the midst of these pure thoughts."

"Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory."

"Meditation while walking has a long, noble history in ancient spiritual disciplines."