“A literary critic of experience never defines anything.”

“I personally regret the shift in literary study from reading primary texts to reading critical and theoretical texts. The major problem today among students is that they simply have not read enough literature. Consequently they do not have the necessary background to take a critical attitude towards literary theory. One needs to test every abstraction against experience.”

“I still found literary criticism to be a suspect activity”

“In other words, our opinions and our thoughts and feelings, anything we experience, need not define us forever.”

“We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.”

“To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent.”

“First one gets works of art, then criticism of them, then criticism of the criticism, and, finally, a book on The Literary Situation, a book which tells you all about writers, critics, publishing, paperbacked books, the tendencies of the (literary) time, what sells and how much, what writers wear and drink and want, what their wives wear and drink and want, and so on.”

“Known as supreme in the Philippine literary world, the keenest critic and writer we ever had.”

“I say quotations are literary. They are good only when dealing with ideas, not with experience. Experience should be pure, unique.”

“The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.”