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

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

I find righteous denunciations of the present state of the language no less dismaying than the present state of the language.

Immature ists imitate. Mature ists steal.

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.

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

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