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

One doesn't bother to believe the credible: the credible is believed already, by definition. There's no adventure of the mind.

Literature is a human apocalypse, man's revelation to man, and criticism is not a body of adjudications, but the awareness of that revelation, the last judgement of mankind.

Historically, a Canadian is an American who rejects the Revolution.

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 do not live in a centred space any more, but have to create our own centres.

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