It is a mistake to expect good work from expatriates for it is not what they do that matters but what they are not doing.

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.

Everything is a dangerous drug except reality which is unendurable.

Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.

There cannot be a personal God without a pessimistic religion. As soon as there is a personal God he is a disappointing God.

A stone lies in a river; a piece of wood is jammed against it; dead leaves, drifting logs, and branches caked with mud collect; weeds settle there, and soon birds have made a nest and are feeding their young among the blossoming water plants. Then the river rises and the earth is washed away. The birds depart, the flowers wither, the branches are dislodged and drift downward; no trace is left of the floating island but a stone submerged by the water; - such is our personality.

Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.