Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.

Reasons for not keeping a notebook: 1) the ambiguity of the reader--it is never quite oneself. 2) I usually hate the sight of my handwriting--it lives too much and I dislike its life--I mean by "lives," of course, betrays too much!

Unless we insist that politics is imagination and mind, we will learn that imagination and mind are politics, and of a kind we will not like.

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.

What marks the artist is his power to shape the material of pain we all have.

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

The diminution of the reality of class, however socially desirable in many respects, seems to have the practical effect of diminishing our ability to see people in their difference and specialness.