We are always in the place of beginning; there is no advance in infinity.

Every human society possesses a mythology which is inherited, transmitted and diversified by literature.

Poetry is the most direct and simple means of expressing oneself in words: the most primitive nations have poetry, but only quitewell developed civilizations can produce good prose. So don't think of poetry as a perverse and unnatural way of distorting ordinary prose statements: prose is a much less natural way of speaking than poetry is. If you listen to small children, and to the amount of chanting and singsong in their speech, you'll see what I mean.

Characters tend to be either for or against the quest. If they assist it, they are idealized as simply gallant or pure; if they obstruct it, they are characterized as simply villainous or cowardly. Hence every typical character...tends to have his moral opposite confronting him, like black and white pieces in a chess game.

We are always in the place of beginning; there is no advance in infinity.

Advertising - a judicious mixture of flattery and threats.

To bring anything really to life in literature we can't be lifelike: we have to be literature-like