“Sad to say, multi-tasking is beyond me. I read one book at a time all ...” — Michael Dirda Quote

Sad to say, multi-tasking is beyond me. I read one book at a time all the way through. If I'm reviewing the book, I have to write the review before I start reading any other book. I especially hate it when the phone rings and interrupts my train of thought.

Deep in my cortex, the year is divided into reading seasons. The period from mid-October to Christmas, for instance, is 'ghost story' time, while Jane Austen and P. G. Wodehouse pretty much own April and May.

When I was a boy in the late 1950s, the public library refused to stock books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. They were regarded as vulgar, ill-written potboilers.

I once read that in vaudeville, it was often the straight guy who got paid more than the comic because that's the tougher job. He has to set up the jokes in just the right way.

I'm very conscious that a music video is beyond just a promotional tool for a song. It takes a song to the next level and it gives a song a new life.

Our daily lives are so mundane, we get taken over by what is immediately in front of us and we don't see beyond that.

The great mystery of our consciousness is beyond our grasp.

Scoring well is great, but not at the cost of straining yourself. Students need to know that there is a life beyond these marks. They should know that five-six years down the line, they will laugh it off.

I have the world's worst taste in men, so now I simply have wonderful relationships of the friend kind, but trying to settle down with somebody? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm beyond that.