Quotes About Author

The poverty of language, which is to say the poverty of man's imagination or the poverty of his inner life, has created an ambivalence which is absolutely false.

To me without Dostoievsky's work there would be a deep, black hole in world literature. The loss of Shakespeare, who must seem like a wild man to the Chinese, would not be as great as losing Dostoievsky.

I was a ripe prey for the alligator of ecstasy.  

He was an incurable dandy living the life of a beggar. And living wholly in the past!

Perhaps you can visualize him saying a thing like that! Myself it's not clear what his idea of me was, or at any rate, it's clear that I was just pure idea, an idea that kept itself alive without food.

Eres cáncer y delirio», me dijo por teléfono el otro día.

I am appalled by the potentialities of drama that are still contained in these feeble bodies.

Kafka's long nightmares were but a preparation for the actual horrors we were to experience even to a greater degree.

Nature is not run like a good clock but like a good (more or less) dog. Snarls sometimes. There should be a book, When a Good Spring Does Bad Things.

I felt her presence, by its spell of might,      Stoop o'er me from above; The calm, majestic presence of the Night,      As of the one I love.

In every negotiation in which you're involved—in every negotiation in which I'm involved—in fact, in every negotiation in the world (from a diplomatic geopolitical negotiation to the purchase of a home)—three crucial elements are always present:

Just my luck,' sighed the endolg. 'Twenty million people in the Realm and I get locked up with a wuss.

Speaking of lunacy,' remarked Pyrgus later, 'are you in love with my sister?' Oh, yes!' Henry said at once.

Wishful thinking sometimes had an influence on observation, even trained observation.

Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians; I'll die a pagan.

Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed.

The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed.

Wild rumours abound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling to.

I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must not for that very reason infallibly be faulty.

loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses

it cannot be much matter of surprise that some whalemen should go still further in their superstitions; declaring Moby Dick not only ubiquitous, but immortal (for immortality is but ubiquity in time);

Dost thee?" said Bildad, in a hollow tone, and turning round to me. "I dost," said I unconsciously, he was so intense a Quaker.

and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude.

I deny their credentials as whales; and have presented them with their passports to quit the Kingdom of Cetology.