Book-publishing is all about politics. Agents, editors, which books will be puffed, which ignored, etc.

Ordinary persons, he said, smiling, found no differences between men. The artist found them all.

I kneel to my Lord because I am such a failure. I pray, I hope, I look to the Gospels.

If on a friend’s bookshelf You cannot find Joyce or Sterne Cervantes, Rabelais, or Burton, You are in danger, face the fact, So kick him first or punch him hard And from him hide behind a curtain.

I thought... their elegance... lies not so much in their clothes as in their bodies, and their bodies have received it, and continue to unceasingly receive it, from their souls, which are just like yours, lovely Simonetta.

The urge for Chinese food is always unpredictable: famous for no occasion, standard fare for no holiday, and the constant as to demand is either whim, the needy plebiscite of instantly famished drunks, or pregnancy.

Artists are never complete people. But if it's art that completes them, then what is taken away?