It is of the essence of imaginative culture that it transcends the limits both of the naturally possible and of the morally acceptable.

Literature as a whole is not an aggregate of exhibits with red and blue ribbons attached to them, like a cat-show, but the range of articulate human imagination as it extends from the height of imaginative heaven to the depth of imaginative hell.

I don't see how the study of language and literature can be separated from the question of free speech, which we all know is fundamental to our society.

We must reject that most dismal and fatuous notion that education is a preparation for life.

Advertising - a judicious mixture of flattery and threats.

The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.

One of the most obvious uses of literature, I think, is its encouragement of tolerance... Bigots and fanatics seldom have any use for the arts, because they're so preoccupied with their beliefs and actions that they can't see them also as possibilities.