Once a secret society establishes itself within an open society, there is no end to the hideous mistrust it must cause.

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

whatever a work of art may be, the artist certainly cannot dare to be simple. He must have a nature as complicated and as violent, as totally unsuggestive of the word innocence, as a modern war.

The memory, experiencing and re-experiencing, has such power over one's mere personal life, that one has merely lived.

Art and propaganda have this much connection, that if a propaganda makes art impossible, it is clearly damned.

I have never been able to write with anything more than the left hand of my mind; the right hand has always been engaged in something to do with personal relationships. I don't complain, because I think my left hand's power, as much as it has, is due to its knowledge of what my right hand is doing.

Mozart eliminates the idea of haste from life. His airs could not lag as they make their journey through the listener's attention; they are not the right shape for loitering. But it is as true that they never rush, they are never headlong or helter-skelter, they splash no mud, they raise no dust.