Maybe any action becomes cowardly once you stop to reason about it.

... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.

What I really do is take real plums and put them in an imaginary cake.

Venice is the worlds unconscious: a misers glittering hoard, guarded by a Beast whose eyes are made of white agate, and by a saint who is really a prince who has just slain a dragon.

love of truth, ordinary common truth recognizable to everyone, is the ruling passion of the novel.

Life for the European is a career; for the American it is a hazard.

A good deal of education consists of unlearning-the breaking of bad habits as with a tennis serve.