“A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car”

“A neurosis is a secret that you don’t know you are keeping. ”

“How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself.”

“Coming to New York from the muted mistiness of London, as I regularly do, is like travelling from a monochrome antique shop to a technicolor bazaar.”

“The only other white people we saw during the three days we stayed there were a German couple intent on taking pictures of their stuffed sheep in a variety of locations around the world.”

“I've had trouble with criticism, I guess. It's hard to know what role criticism plays in either encouraging poets or in getting other people to read them.”

“The text contains no literary criticism. I wanted to describe books, not to be clever at their expense.”