“Hope bases vast premises upon foolish accidents and reads a word where, in fact, only a scribble exists.”

“A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership.”

“Looking foolish does the spirit good. The need not to look foolish is one of youth's many burdens; as we get older we are exempted from more and more.”

“It frightens him to think of her this way. It makes her seem, in terms of love, so vast.”

“What is the past, after all, but a vast sheet of darkness in which a few moments, pricked apparently at random, shine?”

“I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another's brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.”

“The artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before, and he does it without destroying something else. ”