T. S. Eliot

A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel reader is not prepared to give.

T. S. Eliot

A thousand policemen directing traffic cannot tell you why you come or where you go.

T. S. Eliot

A woman drew her long black hair out tight, And fiddled whisper music on those strings, And bats with baby faces in the violet light Whistled, and beat their wings, And crawled head downward down a blackened wall.

T. S. Eliot

All time is eternal, moving inexorably toward an end which we believe is a result of our actions, but over which our control is mere illusion.

T. S. Eliot

All time is unreedemable.

T. S. Eliot

Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity.

T. S. Eliot

An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.

T. S. Eliot

And if all that is meaningless, I want to be cured Of a craving for something I cannot find And of the shame of never finding it.

T. S. Eliot

Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.

T. S. Eliot

April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.

T. S. Eliot