Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.

A great literature is thus chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.

The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology.

If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimismit was surely Edgar Allan Poe--without question the bravest and mostoriginal, if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious, of all the critics that we have produced.

the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.

Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.

The movies today are too rich to have any room for genuine artists. They produce a few passable craftsmen, but no artists. Can you imagine a Beethoven making $100, 000 a year?