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

Modern discussions of the possibility of tragedy are not exercises in literary analysis; they are exercises in cultural diagnostics, more or less disguised.

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.

Art is a form of consciousness.

Everything was simple, physical, painful, exalting. The world consisted of the four elements - land and water, firepower and distancing air.

The most potent elements in a work of art are, often, its silences.

People robbed of their past seem to make the most fervent picture takers, at home and abroad.