Nothing lasts. Not even a great sorrow.

a writer's first duty is to be clear. Clarity is an excellent virtue. Like all virtues it can be pursued at ruinous cost. Paid, so far as I am concerned, joyfully.

You can't argue with a raging want. You can, but it is useless.

Speaking the truth, once you have started it, is too exhilarating to draw back.

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?

The gesture with which one generation guards the next is the movement, and the only time we see it clearly, of life itself.

Failures to love are irremediable and irredeemable.