I read in order to write. I read out of obsession with writing.

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.

We have had, alas, and still have, the doubtful habit of reverence. Above all, we respect things as they are.

An essay is a thing of the imagination. If there is information in an essay, it is by-the-by, and if there is an opinion, one need not trust it for the long run. A genuine essay rarely has an educational, polemical, or sociopolitical use; it is the movement of a free mind at play.

To be any sort of competent writer one must keep one's psychological distance from the supreme artists.

Paradise is only for those who have already been there.

If we had to say what writing is, we would have to define it essentially as an act of courage.