Art is rare and sacred and hard work, and there ought to be a wall of fire around it.

The writer's life seethes within but not without.

...We're a government that believes in everybody having the illusion of free will.

I've always felt that English women had to be approached in a sisterly manner, rather than an erotic manner.

It'll be your own torture," he said, serious. "I hope to God it'll torture you to madness.

Do they merit vitriol, even a drop of it? Yes, because they corrupt the young, persuading them that the mature world, which produced Beethoven and Schweitzer, sets an even higher value on the transient anodynes of youth than does youth itself.... They are the Hollow Men. They are electronic lice.

Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.