T. S. Eliot

All significant truths are private truths. As they become public they cease to become truths; they become facts, or at best, part of the public character; or at worst, catchwords.

A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good.

As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.

Our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow, but our permanent difficulties are difficulties of every moment.

If you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human being can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby 'it.'

A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance.

We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

Art never improves, but... the material of art is never quite the same.

The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.

Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.

My greatest trouble is getting the curtain up and down.

Playwriting gets into your blood and you can't stop it. At least not until the producers or the public tell you to.

The soul is so far from being a monad that we have not only to interpret other souls to ourself but to interpret ourself to ourself.

Business today consists in persuading crowds.

In my beginning is my end.

Where there is no temple there shall be no homes.

Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree.

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.