“The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.”

“Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.”

“Truth resists being projected into the realm of knowledge.”

“All efforts to make politics aesthetic culminate in one thing, war.”

“Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.”

“Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.”

“We were talking of DRAGONS, Tolkien and I In a Berkshire bar. The big workman Who had sat silent and sucked his pipe All the evening, from his empty mug With gleaming eye glanced towards us: "I see...”

“A myth... is a metaphor for a mystery beyond human comprehension. It is a comparison that helps us understand, by analogy, some aspect of our mysterious selves. A myth, in this way of thinking, is ...”

“All that we call sacred history attests that the birth of a poet is the principal event in chronology.”

“[W]hen it's slow, they send you home, and when it's busy, they expect you to stay late. They also expect you to be able to come in to cover someone's shift if a co-worker gets sick at the last minu...”

“Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to p...”

“A man may beg, but a woman has to sell.”