That is what chills your spine when you read an account of a suicide: not the frail corpse hanging from the window bars but what happened inside that heart immediately before.

Literature is always what the dominant ideology recognizes as literature.

They [Americans] want to believe that Good and Evil can be defined in precise categories, that Good is already, or will be easily achieved. ... if this optimism appears too superficial, they will try to create a kind of anti-God: the U.S.S.R. That is Evil, and it only needs to be annihilated to re-establish the reign of Good.

She offered her mouth to him, as if enchanted. A Persian princess, a little Indian, a fox, a morning glory, a lovely wisteria--it always pleased them when you told them they looked like something, like something else.

I was very fond of Lagneau’s phrase: “I have no comfort but in my absolute despair.

Whether you think of it as heavenly or as earthly, if you love life immortality is no consolation for death.

A Darwinian nation of economic fitness abhors idleness, dependence, non-productivity.