My Father Who In This Case Was

I Believe That Nothing Comes Of Nothing, Even In Shakespeare. I Wanted To Know Where He Got The Matter He Was Working With And What He Did With That Matter.

I Have Lots Of Things That Aren't So Old That I Value, Such As A Copy Of Allen Ginsberg's "howl," Which He Signed For Me.

Compared To The Unleashed Forces Of Warfare And Of Faith, Mount Vesuvius Was Kinder To The Legacy Of Antiquity.

A Comparably Capacious Embrace Of Beauty And Pleasure - An Embrace That Somehow Extends To Death As Well As Life, To Dissolution As Well As Creation - Characterizes Montaigne's Restless Reflections On Matter In Motion, Cervantes's Chronicle Of His Mad Knight, Michelangelo's Depiction Of Flayed Skin, Leonardo's Sketches Of Whirlpools, Caravaggio's Loving Attention To The Dirty Soles Of Christ's Feet.

In High School I Read [lev] Tolstoy's "anna Karenina" And Loved It. Then I Read [friedrich] Nietzsche's "on The Genealogy Of Morals" And That Hit Me Hard. I Don't Know Where I Got It. My Parents Warned Me Not To Mention Either Of Those Books When I Went For My College Interviews So I Wouldn't Seem Like An Egghead. They Told Me To Talk About Sports.