The tremendous efficiency and economy of the book has once again demonstrated itself. It's the world's most patient medium.

Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.

In literature, questions of fact or truth are subordinated to the primary literary aims of producing a structure of words for its own sake, and the sign-values of symbols are subordinated to their importance as a structure of interconnected motifs.

In our day the conventional element in literature is elaborately disguised by a law of copyright pretending that every work of art is an invention distinctive enough to be patented.

Americans like to make money, Canadians like to count it.

Americans like to make money; Canadians like to audit it. I don't know of any other country where the accountant enjoys a higher social and moral status.

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