“Language, a great poem in and of itself, is all around us. We live in the lap of enormous wonder, but how rarely do most of us look up and smile in gratitude and pleasure?” — Mark Edmundson Copy Share Image
“The English major reads because, as rich as the one life he has may be, one life is not enough.” — Mark Edmundson Copy Share Image
“In later life most good things happen very slowly; only bad things tend to happen fast.” — Mark Edmundson Copy Share Image
“Real reading is reincarnation. There is no other way to put it. It is being born again into a higher form of consciousness than… — Mark Edmundson Copy Share Image
“The presence of God compelled human[s] to quest for an ideal. They had to strive for something to win God's blessing.... Nietzsche feared that… — Mark Edmundson Copy Share Image
“To be happily married, as I've been fortunate enough to be, is to be a partner in a conversation that can last a full… — Mark Edmundson Copy Share Image
“Language, a great poem in and of itself, is all around us. We live in the lap of enormous wonder, but how rarely do… — Mark Edmundson Copy Share Image
“Books are where the ideas come from, though the ideas need to be simplified, reduced, submitted to ideological purification." ("Notes on the Mono-Culture").” — Mark Edmundson Copy Share Image
“The English major is, first of all, a reader. She's got a book pup-tented in front of her nose many hours a day; her… — Mark Edmundson Copy Share Image
“For someone growing up in America now, there are few available alternatives to the cool consumer worldview.” — Mark Edmundson Copy Share Image
“[Steven] King is an entertainment. King is a diversion. But when you try to take him as a guide to life, he won't work.… — Mark Edmundson Copy Share Image
“Education is about finding out what form of work for you is close to being play—work you do so easily that it restores you… — Mark Edmundson Copy Share Image
“The reason to read Blake and Dickinson and Freud and Dickens is not to become more cultivated or more articulate... The best reason to… — Mark Edmundson Copy Share Image