I mean being a writer is like being a psychoanalyst, but you don't get any patients.

I'm good at reading people.

The better the artist, the more vulnerable he seems to be.

To put yourself into a situation where a mistake cannot necessarily be recouped, where the life you lose may be your own, clears the head wonderfully. It puts domestic problems back into proportion and adds an element of seriousness to your drab, routine life. Perhaps this is one reason why climbing has become increasingly hard as society has become increasingly, disproportionately, coddling.

Despair, in short, seeks its own environment as surely as water finds its own level.

No man kills himself unless there is something wrong with his life.

Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.