The eye identifies itself not with the body it belongs to but with the object of its attention.

Love itself is the most elitist of passions. It acquires its stereoscopic substance and perspective only in the context of culture, for it takes up more place in the mind than it does in bed. Outside of that setting it falls flat into one-dimensional fiction.

Out of Dostoevsky: Kafka. Out of Tolstoy: Margaret Mitchell. (in conversation, explaining his dislike for Tolstoy)

As long as the state permits itself to interfere in the affairs of literature, literature has the right to interfere with the affairs of state.

There's nothing as dear as the sight of ruins.

A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state.

In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface.