At fifteen beauty and talent do not exist there can only be promise of the coming woman.

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

That attitude does not exist so much today but in those days there was a very sharp distinction between basic physics and applied physics. Columbia did not deal with applied physics.

Here you do have forests where pigs could be raised by letting them root about in the forests for a good part of the year. Therefore you have a different attitude toward them compared with what continues to exist in the Middle East.

In Scotland over many years we have cultivated through our justice system what I hope can be described as a 'culture of compassion.' On the other hand there still exists in many parts of the U.S. if not nationally an attitude towards the concept of justice which can only be described as a 'culture of vengeance.'

Right after 'Raymond' I had a world-is-my-oyster attitude but I found out I don't like oysters. I had this existential emptiness. 'What is my purpose? Who am I?' I had a big identity crisis.

For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.

Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination not invention is the supreme master of art as of life.

Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.

A nation devoid of art and artists cannot have a full existence.