When you are young, you think that the old lament the deterioration of life because this makes it easier for them to die without regret. When you are old, you become impatient with the way in which the young applaud the most insignificant improvements … while remaining heedless of the world’s barbarism. I don’t say things have got worse; I merely say the young wouldn’t notice if they had. The old times were good because then we were young, and ignorant of how ignorant the young can be.

The past is a distant, receding coastline, and we are all in the same boat. Along the stern rail there is a line of telescopes; each brings the shore into focus at a given distance. If the boat is becalmed, one of the telescopes will be in continual use; it will seem to tell the whole, the unchanging truth. But this is an illusion; and as the boat sets off again, we return to our normal activity: scurrying from one telescope to another, seeing the sharpness fade in one, waiting for the blur to clear in another. And when the blur does clear, we imagine that we have made it do so all by ourselves.

Ах, век мифов и легенд. Шарлемань, рыцарство, горный Пиренейский
перешеек, будущее Европы, будущее всего Христианского мира на чаше весов, героический арьергард, рог зовущий на битву, человеческая жизнь, пусть сама по себе ничтожная, пусть всего лишь игрушка в руках случая, но тем не менее вброшена в столкновение более значительных сил. Быть пешкой действительно многое значило во времена, когда на шахматной доске стояли рыцари, епископы и короли, когда пешка могла мечтать о том, чтобы стать королевой, когда черные сражались против белых и над всеми был Бог.
Понимаете теперь, что мы потеряли? Теперь есть только пешки и обе стороны играют серыми.

Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. And for this serious task of imaginative discovery and self-discovery, there is and remains one perfect symbol: the printed book.

When I was still quite young I had a complete presentiment of life. It was like the nauseating smell of cooking escaping from a ventilator: you don't have to have eaten it to know that it would make you throw up.

Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everything else go hang. When a line is good it ceases to belong to any school. A line of prose must be as immutable as a line of poetry.