Sometimes we go to a play and after the curtain has been up five minutes we have a sense of being able to settle back in the arms of the playwright. Instinctively we know that the playwright knows his business.

Oh, I have now a mania for shortness. Whatever I read - my own or other people's works - it all seems to me not short enough.

What's the use of talking? You can see for yourself that this is a barbarous country; the people have no morals; and the boredom!

I have no will of my own. Never did. Limp and lily-livered, I always obey - is it possible that's attractive to women?

My love is like a stone tied round my neck; it's dragging me down to the bottom; but I love my stone. I can't live without it.

The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.

We old bachelors smell like dogs, do we? So be it. But I must take issue with your claim that doctors who treat female illnesses are womanizers and cynics at heart. Gynecologists deal with savage prose the likes of which you have never dreamed of.