There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination.

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

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.

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.

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.

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!

There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination.