When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.

Idealism springs from deep feelings, but feelings are nothing without the formulated idea that keeps them whole.

The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers

By the time I was 9, I had the conviction that everybody in the world was an artist except plumbers or people who delivered groceries.

Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.

Machines are admirable and tyrannize only with the user's consent. Where, then, is the enemy? Not where the machine gives relief from drudgery but where human judgment abdicates. The smoothest machine-made product of the age is the organization man, for even the best organizing principle tends to corrupt, and the mechanical principle corrupts absolutely.

Highly-adaptive, informal networks move diagonally and eliptically, skipping entire functions to get things done.