A young poet in America should not be advised at the outset to give up all for the Muse-to seclude himself in the country, to live hand from mouth in Greenwich Village or to escape to the Riviera. I should not advise him even to become a magazine editor or work in a publisher's office. The poet would do better to study a profession, to become a banker or a public official or even to go in for the movies.

They [the English] have a special word, "civil," for what is elsewhere merely ordinary politeness.

It is certainly very hard to write about sex in English without making it unattractive.

Only the curious will learn and only the resolute will overcome the obstacles to learning. The quest quotient has always excited me more than the intelligence quotient.

Real genius of moral insight is a motor which will start any engine.

Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals.

The great mistake about Europe is taking the countries seriously and letting them quarrel and drop bombs on one another.