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

One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.

As biological organisms made of matter, we are subject to the laws of physics and biology: as conscious persons who create our own history we are free to decide what that history shall be. Without science, we should have no notion of equality; without art, no notion of liberty.

The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.

About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; How well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.

There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade's End is one of them.

I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.