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.

Our destiny can be examined, but it cannot be justified or totally explained. We are simply here.

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.

Art and morality are, with certain provisos…one. Their essence is the same. The essence of both of them is love. Love is the perception of individuals. Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.

The chief requirement of the good life, is to live without any image of oneself.

We are all the judges and the judged, victims of the casual malice and fantasy of others, and ready sources of fantasy and malice in our turn. And if we are sometimes accused of sins of which we are innocent, are there not also other sins of which we are guilty and of which the world knows nothing?

Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.