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.

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.

The novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.

If you've been put in your place long enough you begin to act like the place.

I see at last that all the knowledge I wrung from the darkness - that darkness flung me - Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

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

The real war poets are always war poets, peace or any time.