The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and "mangled mind" leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.

Money buys access; access buys influence.

The world is not run by thought, nor by imagination, but by opinion.

Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversations.

We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.

[On newspapers:] A first draft of history.

The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.