Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.

Time is the tiger that devours me, but I am that tiger.

The two important facts I should say, are emotion, and then words arising from emotion. I don't think you can write in an emotionless way. If you attempt it, the result is artificial. I don't like that kind of writing. I think that if a poem is really great, you should think of it as having written itself despite the author. It should flow.

I think of reading a book as no less an experience than travelling or falling in love.

Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.

Of all man’s instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of the arm. But the book is something else altogether: the book is an extension of memory and imagination.

It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.