“One cannot review a bad book without showing off.”

“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.”

“Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.”

“Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.”

“That the speech of self-disclosure should be translatable seems to me very odd, but I am convinced that it is. The conclusion that I draw is that the only quality which all human being without exception possess is uniqueness: any characteristic, on the other hand, which one individual can be recognized as having in common with another, like red hair or the English language, implies the existence of other individual qualities which this classification excludes.”

“The windiest militant trashImportant Persons shoutIs not so crude as our wish:What mad Nijinsky wrote About DiaghilevIs true of the normal heart;For the error bred in the boneOf each woman and each manCraves what it cannot have;Not universal loveBut to be loved alone.”

“Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the differences between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.”