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

Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.

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.

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.

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.

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

Being a Jew is like walking in the wind or swimming: you are touched at all points and conscious everywhere.