In Bluebeard's Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture

We must keep in sharp focus its hideous novelty or renovation. We must keep vital in ourselves a sense of scandal so overwhelming that it affects every significant aspect of our position in history and society. We have, as Emily Dickinson would have said, to keep the soul terribly surprised.

The mechanism is simple but primordial. We hate most those who hold out to us a goal, an ideal, a visionary promise which, even though we have stretched our muscles to the utmost, we cannot reach, which slips, again and again, just out of range of our racked fingers-yet, and this is crucial, which remains profoundly desirable, which we cannot re­ject because we fully acknowledge its supreme value.