"The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is posse..." — Lionel Trilling

It is possible that the contemplation of cruelty will not make us humane but cruel; that the reiteration of the badness of our spiritual condition will make us consent to it.

It is now life and not art that requires the willing suspension of disbelief.

The immature artist imitates. Mature artists steal.

The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.