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

...in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.

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.

The poetic notion of infinity is far greater than that which is sponsored by any creed.

I do not believe in political movements. I believe in personal movement, that movement of the soul when a man who looks at himself is so ashamed that he tries to make some sort of change - within himself, not on the outside.

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

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.