Robert Alter

“Reading is a privileged pleasure because each of us enjoys it, quite complexly, in ways not replicable by anyone else. But there is enough structural common ground in the text itself so that we can talk to each other, even sometimes persuade each other, about what we read: and that many-voiced conversation, with which, thankfully, we shall never have done, is one of the most gratifying responses to literary creation, second only to reading itself.”
― Robert Alter

“Balaam in his wrath hardly seems to notice the miraculous gift of speech but responds as though he were accustomed to having daily domestic wrangles with his asses”
― Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative