Hate is crystallized fear, fear's dividend, fear objectivized. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear will be lurking.

As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.

Optimism and self-pity are the positive and negative poles of modern cowardice.

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.

Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those who do.

What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine?

The river of truth is always splitting up into arms that reunite. Islanded between them, the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the mainstream.