...the essential intention is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man.

All novels are experimental.

The meal was pretentious - a kind of beetroot soup with greasy croutons; pork underdone with loud vulgar cabbage, potato croquettes, tinned peas in tiny jam-tart cases, watery gooseberry sauce; trifle made with a resinous wine, so jammy that all my teeth lit up at once.

Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive.

As we are all solipsists, and all die, the world dies with us. Only very minor literature aims at apocalypse.

...the essential intention is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man.

A Haydn symphony had a meaning for the social group that listened to it. A Mahler symphony had a meaning for the man who composed it. Here is the difference between the classical and romantic attitudes to art.