I never try to impose narrow, moral interpretations on art. Poetry is mostly about the joyful discoveries of language and imagination.

I used to get angry that people didn’t really know the Mexico I knew and loved. Angry at everyone who donned the sombreros and ate Taco Bell and shouted “Happy Cinco de Mayo!”

We live in an age in which new musicals can seemingly be about anything.

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s strength is in the way she captures the presidential scene with companionable prose that most professional historians are unable to capture.

1999 was the year of incredible movies, both in terms of quality and quantity.

Students who read literature have done so most of their lives because of beauty, not because of literary theory.