Of Virginia Woolf: The talent of this generation which is most certain of survival.

The delight we find in art amounts to recognition of a saving grace, to an acknowledgment that the problem of life has a solution implicit in its own nature, though not yet formulated by the intellect.

Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.

I have no faith in the sense of comforting beliefs which persuade me that all my troubles are blessings in disguise.

Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips and be tasted.

All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears.

I see the main problem of my life, and indeed anybody's life, as the balancing of competitive freedoms ... a sense of mutual obligations that have to be honored, and a legal system which can be trusted to step in when that sense fails.