There cannot be a personal God without a pessimistic religion. As soon as there is a personal God he is a disappointing God.

The friendships which last are those wherein each friend respects the other's dignity to the point of not really wanting anything from him.

Hemingway is great in that alone of living writers he has saturated his work with the memory of physical pleasure, with sunshine and salt water, with food, wine and making love and the remorse which is the shadow of that sun.

The American language is in a state of flux based upon survival of the unfittest.

Only by avoiding the beginning of things can we escape their end.

We may assume that we keep people waiting symbolically because we do not wish to see them and that our anxiety is due not to being late, but to having to see them at all.

Melancholy and remorse forms the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality.