A theory of the middle class: that it is not to be determined by its financial situation but rather by its relation to government. That is, one could shade down from an actual ruling or governing class to a class hopelessly out of relation to government, thinking of government as beyond its control, of itself as wholly controlled by government. Somewhere in between and In gradations is the group that has the sense that gov't exists for it, and shapes its consciousness accordingly.

Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony.

I find righteous denunciations of the present state of the language no less dismaying than the present state of the language.

The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.

We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us.

In the American Metaphysical, reality is always material reality, hard, resistant, unformed, impenetrable, and unpleasant.

The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.