We cannot appreciate the art of any age without first acquiring an equivalent of the experience it depicts.

Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy

Maxims in times of danger are useless, experience is incommunicable. The knotted strands of life, desire, assumptions, and moral codes cannot be unsnarled; they can only be cut, which is what happens when an air raid occurs, with a silencing fortissimo like the finale of a Beethoven symphony.

Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.

no subject of study is more important than reading…all other intellectual powers depend on it.

I'll read, and then I'll take naps. When I feel sleep coming on, I give in and don't fight it.

Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.