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.

If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.

Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art.

[T]hat is the triumph of history - truth absolute is not at hand; the original with which to match the copy does not exist.

Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy

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

History, like a vast river, propels logs, vegetation, rafts, and debris; it is full of live and dead things, some destined for resurrection; it mingles many waters and holds in solution invisible substances stolen from distant soils.