I hate injustice, I despise inequity, I condemn hypocrisy, I abhor the lack of reason.

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.

Where there is no style, there is in effect no point of view. There is, essentially, no anger, no conviction, no self. Style is opinion, hung washing, the caliber of a bullet, teething beads.

I read passionately with a need to know and see the act of reading as an act of cognition and not simply a means of passing time.

There is no loneliness like that of a failed marriage.

The parrot holds its food for prim consumption as daintily as any debutante, [with] a predilection for pot roast, hashed-brown potatoes, duck skin, butter, hoisin sauce, sesame seed oil, bananas and human thumb.

Hypocrisy is the essence of snobbery, but all snobbery is about the problem of belonging.