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

Literature is the human activity that make the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty.

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

Ideology is not the product of thought; it is the habit or the ritual of showing respect for certain formulas to which, for various reasons having to do with emotional safety, we have very strong ties of whose meaning and consequences in actuality we have no clear understanding.

Youth is a time when we find the books we give up but do not get over.

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

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.