When I write after dark", observed Cyril Connolly, "the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose

If the soul cannot find its jacket. it is condemned to an eternity of wandering--naked and alone

Muses are fickle, and many a writer, peering into the voice, has escaped paralysis by ascribing the creative responsibility to a talisman: a lucky charm, a brand of paper, but most often a writing instrument. Am I writing well? Thank my pen. Am I writing badly? Don't blame me blame my pen. By such displacements does the fearful imagination defend itself.

I can imagine few worse fates than walking around for the rest of one's life wearing a typo.

My brother and I were able to fantasize far more extravagantly about our parents' tastes and desires, their aspirations and their vices, by scanning their bookcases than by snooping in their closest. Their selves were on their shelves.

Anyone who doubts that caffeine is a drug should read some of the prose composed under its influence.

If my father were still writing essays, every full-grown 'girl' would probably be transformed into a'woman'.