The Past Is The Only Dead Thing

There Is No Pain Equal To That Which Two Lovers Can Inflict On One Another... It Is When We Begin To Hurt Those Whom We Love That The Guilt With Which We Are Born Becomes Intolerable, And Since All Those Whom We Love Intensely And Continuously Grow Part Of Us, And Since We Hate Ourselves In Them, So We Torture Ourselves And Them Together.

An Author Arrives At A Good Style When His Language Performs What Is Required Of It Without Shyness.

Civilization Is An Active Deposit Which Is Formed By The Combustion Of The Present With The Past. Neither In Countries Without A Present Nor In Those Without A Past Is It To Be Encountered. Proust In Venice, Matisse's Birdcages Overlooking The Flower Market At Nice, Gide On The Seventeenth-century Quais Of Toulon, Lorca In Granada, Picasso By Saint-germain-des-prés: There Lies Civilization And For Me It Can Exist Only Under Those Liberal Regimes In Which The Present Is Alive And Therefore Capable Of Assimilating The Past.

The River Of Truth Is Always Splitting Up Into Arms That Reunite. Islanded Between Them, The Inhabitants Argue For A Lifetime As To Which Is The Mainstream.

Poets Arguing About Modern Poetry: Jackals Snarling Over A Dried-up Well.