There is a stage in any misery when the victim begins to find a deep satisfaction in it.

Nationalism will keep its venom until we succeed in creating an image of the nations of the whole world as so many provinces.

No form of art repeats or imitates successfully all that can be said by another; the writer conveys his experience of life along a channel of communication closed to painter, mathematician, musician, film-maker.

Lord, if there is a heartache Vienna cannot cure I hope never to feel it. I came home cured of everything except Vienna.

Failures to love are irremediable and irredeemable.

Fear is the deep motive of abstract art - fear of a repellent civilization which is dominated by the power of things. ... who can be surprised if, more sensitive than the others, the artist is terrified by the power things have acquired over us?

Not literature alone, but society itself is wormed and rotten when language ceases to be respected not merely by advertisers and politicians, but by persons of learning and authority.