“How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.”

“The American press exists for one purpose only, and that is to convince Americans that they are living in the greatest and most envied country in the history of the world. The Press tells the American people how awful every other country is and how wonderful the United States is and how evil communism is and how happy they should be to have freedom to buy seven different sorts of detergent.”

“Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made”

“The unfed mind devours itself.”

“Nothing human is finally calculable; even to ourselves we are strange.”

“The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.”

“Although Americans justify their self-interest in moral terms, their true interest is never itself moral.”