Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose.

Beneath a mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom. I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivolous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound; each day, vacuous and habit-ridden, I help it re-form.

Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.

I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.

In my religion all believers would stop work at sundown and have a drink together.

The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.

In my religion, there would be no exclusive doctrine; all would be love, poetry, and doubt.