There is more beauty in truth, even if it is a dreadful beauty. The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar.

No one wants advice - only corroboration.

In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

I remember as a child reading or hearing the words 'The Great Divide' and being stunned by the glorious sound, a proper sound for the granite backbone of a continent. I saw in my mind escarpments rising into the clouds, a kind of natural Great Wall of China.

The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer.