"...one feels that in Iran the masters just mentioned had finally, after several centuries, reached the point where they had exhausted the belles-lettrist possibilities of Arabic and were now very busily burning up its resources. How much further can one get in perfection than al-Hamadâni? He could compose a book on a certain theme, beginning with the last line and working back, line by line, to the first line, and it would be a marvel of rhetorical artistry." --Th* Cambridg* History of Iran, v. 4 (1975)


"My dream that Ratzi would go into a conclave and emerge to announce that it was all a mistake, the papacy was dissolved, and good Catholics should all embrace an enlightened materialistic naturalism hasn't come true just yet."


"War shrinks everything. It means less time, less tolerance, less imagination, less curiosity, less play. We cannot read the leisurely wasteful masterpieces of the past without being irritated by the amount they take for granted. ...Yet we must remember that the life which many of us are now leading is unfriendly to the appreciation of literature...In these philistine conditions it is as unfair to judge art as if we were seasick. It is even more unfair to blame writers for their action or inaction in the years before the war, when we still tolerate in office nearly all the old beaming second-rate faces, with their indomitable will to power, and their self-sealing tanks of complacency." --Cyril Connolly, in: Writ*rs of World War II


"It is important to see that fascism is a disease, as catching as influenza; we all when tired and disillusioned have fascist moments, when belief in human nature vanishes, when we burn with anger and envy like the underdog and the sucker, when we hate the virtuous and despise the weak, when we feel as Goebbels permanently feels, that all fine sentiment is ballyhoo, that we are the dupes of our leaders, and that the masses are evil, to be resisted with the cruelty born of fear. This is the theological sin of despair, a Haw-Haw moment which quickly passes, but which fascism has made permanent, and built up into a philosophy. In every human being there is a Lear and a fool, a hero and a clown who comes on the stage and burlesques his master. He should never be censored, but neither be allowed to rule." --ibid


"After several e-mails of discussion, she asked me to do a renga with her about peace without mentioning the word."