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.

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

The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.

Imagination is nostalgia for the past, the absent it is the liquid solution in which art develops the snapshot of reality.

Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.

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

There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another.