Reviewers do not read books with much care . . . their profession is more given to stupidity and malice and literary ignorance even than the profession of novelist.

The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, which looks to the European like serial polygamy, is the moral solution to the problem of the itch. Love comes into it too, of course, but in Europe we tend to see marital love as an eternity which encompasses hate and also indifference: when we promise to love we really mean that we promise to honor a contract. Americans, seeming to take marriage with not enough seriousness, are really taking love and sex with too much.

To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.

Beckett does not believe in God, though he seems to imply that God has committed an unforgivable sin by not existing.

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

It's always good to remember where you come from and celebrate it. To remember where you come from is part of where you're going.

Eat this sweetish segment or spit it out. You are free.