I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply?

My great-aunt. . . . said nobody under 18 had any business reading Dickens. . . . She was right.

You must come to terms with your wholeself. the wholeness which exceeds all our virtue and all our vice.

No, I don't mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression.

Writing makes no noise, except groans, and it can be done everywhere, and it is done alone.

I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people.

Artists are people who are not at all interested in the facts - only in the truth.