I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.

Write about what you're afraid of.

Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life.

The self cannot be escaped, but it can be, with ingenuity and hard work, distracted.

Now, here is the point about the self: it is insatiable. It is always, always hankering. It is what you might call rapacious to a fault. The great flaming mouth to the thing is never in this world going to be stuff full.

Faint equivalents can sometimes be found ... . Or it can be rendered obliquely-an adolescent's mental image of his or her parents making love, which must be something on the order of crocodiles mating.

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.