The Critic's Hankering To Be Law-giver Rather

Only One Person In A Thousand Knows The Trick Of Really Living In The Present. Most Of Us Spend Fifty-nine Minutes An Hour Living In The Past, With Regret For Lost Joys Or Shame For Things Badly Done (both Utterly Useless And Weakening) Or In A Future Which We Either Long For Or Dread. . . . There Is Only One Minute In Which You Are Alive, This Minute, Here And Now. The Only Way To Live Is By Accepting Each Minute As An Unrepeatable Miracle. Which Is Exactly What It Is-a Miracle And Unrepeatable.

Each Time That I Have Run Away - And From A Habit It Quickly Became An Illness - I Have Betrayed Someone. Myself, But Not Always Only Myself.

The Past Is Able To Close Round Certain Moments, As If They Were Seeds, And Deliver Them Again Fresh And Living In The Present.

Not Literature Alone, But Society Itself Is Wormed And Rotten When Language Ceases To Be Respected Not Merely By Advertisers And Politicians, But By Persons Of Learning And Authority.

Fear Is The Deep Motive Of Abstract Art - Fear Of A Repellent Civilization Which Is Dominated By The Power Of Things. ... Who Can Be Surprised If, More Sensitive Than The Others, The Artist Is Terrified By The Power Things Have Acquired Over Us?