The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations.

We are all prisoner, but the name of our cure is not freedom

Falling out of love is very enlightening. For a short while you see the world with new eyes.

They are universal places, like churches, hallowed meeting places of all mankind.

I live, I live, with an absolutely continuous sense of failure. I am always defeated, always. Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea. The years pass and one has only one life. If one has a thing at all one must do it and keep on and on and on trying to do it better.

Real misery cuts off all paths to itself.

True love gallops, it flies, it is the swiftest of all modes of thought, swifter even than hate and fear.