“I see at last that all the knowledge I wrung from the darkness—that the darkness flung me— Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing, The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness And we call it wisdom. It is pain.”

“He thinks that Schiller and St Paul were just two Partisan Review editors.”

“I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.”

“If we meet an honest and intelligent politician, a dozen, a hundred, we say they aren't like politicians at all, and our category of politicians stays unchanged; we know what politicians are like.”