“It is probably no mere historical accident that the word person, in its first meaning, is a mask. It is rather a recognition of the fact that everyone is always and everywhere, more or less consciously, playing a role.”

“The critic who doesn't make a personal statement, in remeasurements he himself has made, is merely an unreliable critic. He is not a measurer but a repeater of other men's results. KRINO, to pick out for oneself, to choose. That's what the word means.”

“Memory, personal and historical, is often accompanied by moralistic sentiment. Nostalgia is an act of escapism and self-indulgence, but to forget the past is an even graver sin. Proust presents a more complicated paradigm. Looking back provides us with a reflection of ourselves, but also with an awareness of the mirror — grounds for our ideas as well as a means for their correction”

“A nation which neglects the perceptions of its artists declines. After a while it ceases to act, and merely survives.There is probably no use in telling this to people who can't see it without being told.”

“And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably.”

“It was always you. I thought it was someone else, but it was you. You were the person that I felt.”

“You have been second always. Tragical?No. You preferred it to the usual thing:One dull man, dulling and uxorious,One average mind- with one thought less, each year.”