If Montaigne is a man in the prime of life sitting in his study on a warm morning and putting down the sum of his experience in his rich, sinewy prose, then Pascal is that same man lying awake in the small hours of the night when death seems very close and every thought is heightened by the apprehension that it may be his last.

The true work of art is the one which the seventh wave of genius throws up the beach where the undertow of time cannot drag it back.

It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book.

In a perfect union the man and woman are like a strung bow. Who is to say whether the string bends the bow, or the bow tightens the string?

There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.

Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth.

Hate is crystallized fear, fear's dividend, fear objectivized. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear will be lurking.