“The only transformation that interests me is a total transformation⎯however minute. I want the encounter with a person or a work of art to change everything.”

“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”

“Despise violence. Despise national vanity and national self-love. Try to imagine once a day that you are not an American.”

“Ideas move me.”