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.

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

Marriage is the permanent conversation between two people who talk over everything and everyone until death breaks the record.

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

We fear something before we hate.

The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.

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