“There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil.”

“It is astonishing to think that millions of people in my time—now, too, I suppose—actually thought that at a given moment in history two human beings had evolved to a higher state than that of all the gods that ever were or ever will be. This is titanism, as the Greeks would say. This is madness.”

“We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.”

“The public is always relieved to find that once the chief officers of state are elected they do not sincerely want change.”

“There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.”

“In general, [. . .] novel-theorists have nothing very urgent or interesting to say about literature. Why then do they write when they have nothing to say? Because the ambitious teacher can only rise in the academic bureaucracy by writing at complicated length about writing that has already been much written about. The result of all this book-chat cannot interest anyone who knows literature while those who would like to learn something about books can only be mystified and discouraged by these commentaries.”

“The planet Venus, a circle of silver in a green sky, pierced the edge of the evening while the wintry woods darkened about me and in the stillness the regular sound of my footsteps striking the pavement was like a the rhythmic beating of a giant stone heart.”