Tragedy, as you know, is always a fait accompli, whereas terror always has to do with anticipation, with man's recognition of hisown negative potential--with his sense of what he is capable of.

Were we to choose our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth. I believe ... that for someone who has read a lot of Dickens to shoot his like in the name of an idea is harder than for someone who has read no Dickens.

I'm 100 percent Jewish by blood, but by education I'm nothing. By affiliation I'm nothing.

The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.

Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse

Language and, presumably, literature are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature toward the state is essentially the reaction of the permanent-better yet, the infinite-against the temporary, against the finite.

In the West you have every opportunity for civilization to triumph.