“Art always penetrates the particular fissures in one's psychic life.”

“In short, it became possible - never easy, but possible - in the poet Auden's phrase to find the mortal world enough.”

“Human beings, Lucretius thought, must not drink in the poisonous belief that their souls are only part of the world temporarily and they are heading somewhere else. That belief will only spawn in t...”

“There was a time in the ancient world - a very long time - in which the central cultural problem must have seemed an inexhaustible outpouring of books. Where to put them all? How to organize them o...”

“Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity.”

“To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.”

“art is risk made visible”

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

“Its madness to see life as it is and not how it should be.”

“Every novel says to the reader: Things are not as simple as you think. That is the novels eternal truth, but it grows steadily harder to hear amid the din of easy, quick answers that come faster th...”

“It’s madness to see life as it is and not how it should be.”

“He blushed to see other Frenchmen overcome with joy whenever they met a compatriot abroad. The would fall on each other, cluster in a raucous group, and pass whole evenings complaining about the ba...”