A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.

Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.

Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art.

Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.

Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.

It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, "What should I write at the age of sixty-four," but never, "What should I write in 1940."