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

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

We are all ill; but even a universal sickness implies an idea of health.

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.

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!

This desire to fashion, to shape, a self and a life has all but gone from a contemporary culture whose emphasis, paradoxically enough, is so much on self.

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