I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.

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, but because it wishes to be art.

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.

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

Yes, success is everything. Failure is more common. Most achieve a sort of middling thing, but fortunately one's situation is always blurred, you never know absolutely quite where you are.