The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.

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.

Beautiful women must think about their beauty as capitalists think about their investments or politicians about their majorities; it is all they have to insure their places in the world.

Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.

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

Green leaves on a dead tree is our epitaph-green leaves, dear reader, on a dead tree.

The books I haven't written are better than the books other people have.