In photographing dwarfs, you don't get majesty & beauty. You get dwarfs.

The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes.

That tendency of social thought to generalize, to describe a leading tendency in a society in such a way that it seems that everything falls within its iron laws, is very common. Of course our own experience tells us that life is not as monochrome as these thinkers depict it. On the other hand they are very valuable because they alert us to transformations we are likely to take for granted.

You know that you can't make references to the Classics any longer and less and less to the English classics even.

I'm not sure at all that literature should be studied on the university level. ... Why should people study books? Isn't it rather silly to study Pride and Prejudice. Either you get it or you don't.

I write essays first because I have a passionate relationship to the subject and second because the subject is one that people are not talking about.

A good book is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility what human nature is of what happens in the world. It's a creator of inwardness.