I'm not interested in giving aid and comfort to the neo­-Conservatives.

Few ever see what is not already inside their heads.

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

One could plausibly argue that it is for quite sound reasons that the whole capacity for sexual ecstasy is inaccessible to most people - given that sexuality is something, like nuclear energy, which may prove amenable to domestication through scruple, but then again may not.

The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.

The purpose of art is always, ultimately, to give pleasure - though our sensibilities may take time to catch up with the forms of pleasure that art in a given time may offer.