It's not art for art's sake, it's art for my sake.

Since obscenity is the truth of our passion today, it is the only stuff of art -- or almost the only stuff.

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

While we live, let us live.

I never know when I sit down, just what I am going to write. I make no plan; it just comes, and I don't know where it comes from.

I am a man and alive. For this reason I am a novelist. And, being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, te scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog....Only in the novel are all things given full play.

Do come back and draw the ferrets, they are the most lovely noble darlings in the world.