Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.

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

It is possible that the contemplation of cruelty will not make us humane but cruel; that the reiteration of the badness of our spiritual condition will make us consent to it.

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

The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather.

At the bottom of at least popular Marxism there has always been a kind of disgust with humanity as it is and a perfect faith in humanity as it is to be.

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