Life is a game with many rules but no referee. One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the holy book. Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose.

After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.

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

Poetry is what is gained in translation.

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.

When the eye fails to find beauty-alias solace-it commands the body to create it, or, failing that, adjusts itself to perceive virtue in ugliness.

All the literati keep at least one imaginary friend.