Our attitude toward our own culture has recently been characterized by two qualities, braggadocio and petulance. Braggadocio - empty boasting of American power, American virtue, American know-how - has dominated our foreign relations now for some decades. Here at home - within the family, so to speak - our attitude to our culture expresses a superficially different spirit, the spirit of petulance. Never before, perhaps, has a culture been so fragmented into groups, each full of its own virtue, each annoyed and irritated at the others.

When I was living in England I found that the more I lived abroad, the more American I discovered I was.

Creators, makers of the new, can never become obsolete, for in the arts there is no correct answer. The story of discoverers could be told in simple chronological order, since the latest science replaces what went before. But the arts are another story- a story of infinite addition. We must find order in the random flexings of the imagination.

The hero was distinguished by his achievement; the celebrity by his name or trademark.

Human models are more vivid and more persuasive than explicit moral commands.

. . . the messiness of experience, that may be what we mean by life.

An enamored amateur need not be a genius to stay out of the ruts he has never been trained in.