Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning, truth and beauty can't.

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger.

I like being myself. Myself and nasty.

Drinking can not be sacramentalised except in religions which set no store on decorum. The worship of Dionysos or the Celtic god of beer was a loud and disorderly affair.

There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.

And so, resisting the temptation to wallow in artistic remorse, I prefer to leave both well and ill alone and to think about something else