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

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.

Reviewing books is all about coziness. It is all of it a kind of caucus race. Women review women, Jewish writers review and praise Jewish writers, blacks review blacks, etc.

Will I have to use a dictionary to read your book?" asked Mrs. Dodypol. "It depends," says I, "how much you used the dictionary before you read it.

The man who has faith in logic is always cuckolded by reality.

It's true, you can never eat a pet you name. And anyway, it would be like a ventriloquist eating his dummy.

We all end up living secret lives. We create what we are willing to admire and admiring what we shouldn't confess to the secret ofour own sin, our own insufficiency, our own sadness. We all end up taking our secrets into the world and handing them over to strangers, only to realize it's often too late to claim them back. The very nature of time passing is sad beyond words. Memories mean they're gone.