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" It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ. "

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" You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people. "

" No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted. "

" Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be. "

" In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag. "

" Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about. "

" Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one. "

" Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good. "

" A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become. "

" When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes. "

" All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation. "

" May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that 'faith' is even more difficult for Him than it is for us? "

" Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession. "

" A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language. "

" Now is the age of anxiety. "

" No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible. "

" The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition. "

" A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep. "

" Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self. "

" No hero is mortal till he dies. "

" If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me. "

" To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why? "

" A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do. "

" The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living. "

" A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us. "

" Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest. "

" All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him. "

" Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality. "

" It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen. "

" Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic. "

" Art is born of humiliation. "