Writers are what they write, also what they fail to write.

- Diana Trilling

I regard the whole of my life as having been lived in an anxious world.

- Diana Trilling

Wit isn't a useful instrument of defense; it may make a short-run appeal, but it creates a backlash- one saw this in the Hiss case and the Oppenheime…

- Diana Trilling

I learned early in life that to laugh before breakfast was to cry before dinner.

- Diana Trilling

Ideology is the sterner face of myth and we're a myth-making people.

- Diana Trilling

There's much to be said for challenging fate instead of ducking behind it.

- Diana Trilling

The distinction that Jews have themselves always made between Jews of German origin and Jews of East European origin is as stringent as that between …

- Diana Trilling

We lived our lives as if life was forever. To live one's life without a sense of time is to squander it.

- Diana Trilling

Touch a university with hostile hands and the blood you draw is prompt, copious, and real.

- Diana Trilling