“A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.”

The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension.

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

To break the pentameter, that was the first heaven.

There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight.

The worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism.

A man’s hope measures his civilization. The attainability of the hope measures, or may measure, the civilization of his nation and time.

Why fight for a flag when you can buy one for a nickel.

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

I did not enter into silence. Silence captured me.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet black bough.

The flavors of the peach and the apricot are not lost from generation to generation. Neither are they transmitted by book learning.

A real building is one on which the eye can light and stay lit.

Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.

Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.

Artists are the antennae of the race.

The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.

I can’t answer either question. But the look she gives me reminds me of the look in the attack dog’s eyes in the aptitude test – a vicious, predatory stare. She wants to rip me to pieces. I can’t lie down in submission now. I have become an attack dog too.

Don’t make me regret this” i said, breathless. ” you haven’t regretted me once”. He kissed me, and i answered so hungrily i thought my lips would bruise. Patch&nora ( p. 180)

Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better problems.

What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat… where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.

One of the pleasures of reading old letters is the knowledge that they need no answer.

My work stops at publication. If the books don’t contain in themselves their reasons for being – questions and answers – it means I was wrong to have them published.

When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.

People ask me about what sacrifices I’ve made. I always answer: I’ve made no sacrifices, I’ve made choices.