I can't claim to be disenchanted "with the current state of fiction" because I read so little of it. My reading is mostly drawn to history.

It is useless either to hate or to love truth - but it should be noticed.

Nothing is so awesomely unfamiliar as the familiar that discloses itself at the end of a journey. Nothing shakes the heart so much as meeting-far, far away-what you last met at home.

a. Critics: people who make monuments out of books. b. Biographers: people who make books out of monuments. c. Poets: people who raze monuments. d. Publishers: people who sell rubble. e. Readers: people who buy it.

To want to be what one can be is purpose in life.

Death persecutes before it executes.

Language makes culture, and we make a rotten culture when we abuse words.