Charity you can give even when you haven't got.

Nationality isn't soul.

Prufrock had measured out his life with measuring spoons; Dubin, in books resurrecting the lives of others.

I write a book at least three times-once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.

It's one thing for a man not to know, not to have learned; it's another not to be able to live by what one does know.

How can we be strangers if we both believe in God?

To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new. Even Matisse painted some of his Fauvist pictures in anxiety. Maybe that helped him to simplify. Character, discipline, negative capability count. Write, complete, revise. If it doesn't work, begin something else.