“The most brilliant example [of good editing] in our time
. . . was Ezra Pound’s editing of The Waste Land, which made the poem infinitely better.”

On the difficulties of writing about McCarthyism: “Few people acted large enough for drama and not pleasant enough for comedy.”

The Paris Review Eagle, or “the bird” as it was referred to, was designed by William Pène du Bois, the magazine’s art editor, in the spring of 1952. The symbolism is not difficult: an American eagle is carrying a pen: the French association is denoted by the helmet the bird is wearing—actually a Phrygian hat originally given a slave on his freedom in ancient times and which subsequently became the liberty cap or bonnet rouge worn by the French Revolutionists of the 19th Century. 

Sue was not overly fond of bullfights. I believe they wearied and distressed her, although she did enjoy the music, the colors, and the pageantry. She went to bullfights with me in Spain—long ago, twenty-three years ago—when we were first together.