I'm sorry, I'm absolutely convinced that there is at the moment no realistic prospect for very much hope in human affairs.

Language is the main instrument of man's refusal to accept the world as it is.

If, in the Judaic perception, the language of the Adamic was that of love, the grammars of fallen man are those of the legal code.

The most important tribute any human being can pay to a poem or a piece of prose he or she really loves is to learn it by heart. Not by brain, by heart; the expression is vital.

I believe that a work of art, like metaphors in language, can ask the most serious, difficult questions in a way which really makes the readers answer for themselves; that the work of art far more than an essay or a tract involves the reader, challenges him directly and brings him into the argument.

I'm sorry, I'm absolutely convinced that there is at the moment no realistic prospect for very much hope in human affairs.

Every one of my opponents, every one of my critics, will tell you that I am a generalist spread far too thin in an age when this is not done anymore, when responsible knowledge is specialized knowledge.