If you expect the worst from a person you can never be disappointed.

If you want to be considered a poet, you will have to show mastery of the petrarchan sonnet form or the sestina. Your musical efforts must begin with well-formed fugues. There is no substitute for craft... Art begins with craft, and there is no art until craft has been mastered.

I was very lighthearted. This often the way when the abandonment of personal responsibility is enforced: neither wronged innocence or just guilt can seriously impair the sensation of freedom one has.

Blessed tree and blessed birds, that were to be neither saved nor damned.

A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although... he may be permitted to be an intellectual.

But we were all feeling that bit shagged and fagged and fashed, it having been an evening of some small energy expenditure.

If you expect the worst from a person you can never be disappointed.