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.

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

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.

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.

Youth is a time when we find the books we give up but do not get over.

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.