“Literature is news that stays news.”
“Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.”
“Real education must ultimately be limited to one who INSISTS on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.”
“Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.”
“But the one thing you shd. not do is suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.”
“Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.”
“Wars are made to make debt.”
“All great art is born of the metropolis.”
“A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression.”
“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
“With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.”
“I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn't irascible.”
“I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them.”
“If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.”
“A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations.”
“AS A MIND, who the hell else is there left for me to take an interest IN??”
“The worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism.”
“'Tis the white stag, Fame, we're a-hunting, bid the world's hounds come to horn!”
“A heroic figure... not wholly to blame for the religion that's been foisted on him.”
“Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.”
“The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.”
“No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.”
“Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.”
“I could I trust starve like a gentleman. It's listed as part of the poetic training, you know.”
“You let me throw the bricks through the front window. You go in at the back and take the swag.”
“The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.”
“Religion, oh, just another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art.”
“The Image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.”
“People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.”
“I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown.”