Key Metaphors Help Determine What And How

John Updike Is Always Fun. And One Of My Former Students, Tom Pynchon. And Harold Bloom, Another Former Student.

If You Don't Set Your Writing - Teaching - At A Level That Makes Them Stretch, They Are Never Going To Develop Their Intellectual Muscle.

At First, Students Tend To Freeze At The First Effort. The Breakthrough Comes When They Realize That They Can Make It Better - Can Identify What Their Purposes Were And Realize Better Ways To Achieve Those Purposes.

I Think The Hardest Thing To Teach A Student Is That What He Or She Puts Down On Paper Is Changeable. It's Not The Final Thing, It's The First Thing, Which May Just Be The Suggestive, Vague Identification Of Something That You Have To Come Back To And Rewrite.

When I Was A Graduate Student, The Leading Spirits At Harvard Were Interested In The History Of Ideas.