The expression to write something down suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it.

The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.

Blue is therefore most suitable as the color of interior life.

Sports, politics, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated.

it is discouraging to leave the past behind only to see it coming toward you like the thunderstorm which drenched you yesterday.

It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word

For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock.

I am unlikely to trust a sentence that comes easily.

I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.

The speeding reader guts a book the way the skillful clean fish. The gills are gone, the tail, the scales, the fins; then the fillet slides away swifly as though fed to a seal.

What else is soul but a listener?

To protect one’s own statement is the greatest form of violence. To impress upon others that his statement is correct is a form of violence itself.

I think that is supposed to be good, that I get less from him but I feel worthless.

A true leader is one who accepts defeat in the same way he accepts winning.

Protection and security are only valuable if they do not cramp life excessively.

The vices come as passengers, visit us as guest and stay as masters.

All forms of power - even based on the consensus of the democratic system - react when they are being attacked, or when those who exercise power become a target.

Nothing, of course, will ever take the place of the good old fashion of 'liking' a work of art or not liking it; the more improved criticism will not abolish that primitive, that ultimate, test.

It ever is the marked propensity of restless and aspiring minds to look into the stretch of dark futurity.

Cable news is more titillating to talk about who's up and who's down and all that nonsense as opposed to what's actually done.

Grace does not destroy nature, it perfects it.