In fact I'm in too much of a mental muddle to know where I am - an idealist or not. I'm a mere man of letters, and I do what I can with those subjects.

Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures.

Had I to give advice to writers (and I do not think they need it, because everyone has to find out things for himself), I would tell them simply this; I would ask them to tamper as little as they can with their own work. I do not think tinkering does any good. The moment comes when one has found out what one can do - when one has found one's natural voice, one's rhythm. Then I do not think that slight emendations should prove useful.

Lully's machine, Mill's fear and Lasswitz's chaotic library can be the subject of jokes, but they exaggerate a propensity which is common: making metaphysics and the arts into a kind of play with combinations.

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

A . . . poet is a discoverer rather than an inventor.

A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource.