If we meet an honest and intelligent politician, a dozen, a hundred, we say they aren't like politicians at all, and our category of politicians stays unchanged; we know what politicians are like.

It is better to entertain an idea than to take home to live with you for the rest of your life.

Pain comes from the darkness. And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.

More and more people think of the critic as an indispensable middle man between writer and reader, and would no more read a book alone, if they could help it, than have a baby alone.

The safest way to avoid the world is through art; and the safest way to be linked to the world is through art.

We died like aunts of pets or foreigners.