A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige throughbeing mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.

It is a great pity that every human being does not, at an early stage of his life, have to write a historical work. He would then realize that the human race is in quite a jam about truth.

Economists are like Aeolian harps, and the sounds that issue from them are determined by the winds that blow.

There is no escape from mystery. It is the character of our being.

Fiction and poetry are the only way one can stop time and give an account of an experience and nail it down so that it lasts for ever.

Nobody ever wrote a good book simply by collecting a number of accurate facts and valid ideas.

The mind is its own enemy, that fights itself with the innumerable pliant and ineluctable arms of the octopus.