I believe that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love.

Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, rather because it wishes to be art. However much the writer might long to be straightforward, these virtues are no longer available to him. He discovers that in being simple, honest, straightforward, nothing much happens.

The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.

There is no moment that exceeds in beauty that moment when one looks at a woman and finds that she is looking at you in the same way that you are looking at her. The moment in which she bestows that look that says, "Proceed with your evil plan, sumbitch.

And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.

Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.

How can you be alienated without first having been connected?