Why were we driven out of Paradise? Why did we fall into this gnawing disease of unappeasable dissatisfaction? Not because we sinned. Ah, no. All the animals in Paradise enjoyed the sensual passion of coition. Not because we sinned. But because we got sex into our head.

The east is not for me--the sensuous spiritual voluptuousness, the curious sensitiveness of the naked people, their black, bottomless, hopeless eyes.

You don't want to be an animal, you want to observe your own animal functions, so as to get a mental thrill out of them. It is allpurely secondary--and more decadent than the most hide-bound intellectualism.

Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.

Let yourself fall in love. If you have not done so already, you are wasting your life.

Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved.

The novel is a perfect medium for revealing to us the changing rainbow of our living relationships. The novel can help us to live,as nothing else can: no didactic Scripture, anyhow. If the novelist keeps his thumb out of the pan.