It is a fallacy to think that carping is the strongest form of criticism: the important work begins after the artist's mistakes have been pointed out, and the reviewer can't put it off indefinitely with sneers, although some neophytes might be tempted to try: 'When in doubt, stick out your tongue' is a safe rule that never cost one any readers. But there's nothing strong about it, and it has nothing to do with the real business of criticism, which is to do justice to the best work of one's time, so that nothing gets lost.

Not that there weren't real communists in the labor unions, and real spies in Washington, but these had nothing to do with the show that was being put on for u…

Off she'd go to the hospital, a place I believe she secretly liked because they treat you like a child there.

Saloons provide moments of genuine ecstasy - but only if your soul is at peace and the rest of your life bears contemplating. Otherwise, they are palaces of mi…

The best of our fiction is by novelists who allow that it is as good as they can give, and the worst by novelists who maintain that they could do much better i…

I regard criticism as an art, and if in this country and in this age it is practiced with honesty, it is no more remunerative than the work of an avant-garde f…

I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.