Status Updates From The Whole Five Feet: What t...

on Pascal's Apology for the Christian Religion: 'Because the book was left in outline form, it seems sketchy, even aphoristic. But certain parts are like kernels, deceptively small for all they contain, waiting to burst open with the application of a little heat.'

'The other plays in this volume serve as a reminder that unlike Wordsworth's "lower class conversation," Shakespeare's language hasn't been made strange by the distance of time. It was always strange. Perhaps we once had a larger appetite for such strangeness.'

'This is perhaps the most striking thing about the Hippocratic Oath—not that it binds the physician to pass on his art to worthy disciples, but that it binds him to withhold it from all others. The implication is that knowledge, gained at great cost, may be lost to humanity if not handled properly—that the ground in which it is planted must be properly cultivated'

'At certain moments throughout the day, everything got very quiet, and this quiet called out to be filled by acts of the imagination.'

'(Dante knows Virgil only from his books, but knows him well enough to follow him into hell.)'

'But for all we have learned in two thousand years, the world seems to me still basically mysterious, still dark, and for one night this flame seems like a beautiful way to answer that darkness.'