The images of things are not the things in themselves.

We make a mistake to condescend to the past as if it were preparatory to our own time.

I like commas. I detest semi-colons — I don’t think they belong in a story. And I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn’t need them, they were fly-specks on the page.

Every major work of art is a transgression, but the artist is not necessarily, by nature, a transgressor.

Someone dying asks if there is life after death. Yes, comes the answer, only not yours.

And so do people pass out of one's life and all you can remember of them is their humanity, a poor fitful thing of no dominion, like your own.

All over the world today, not just in the totalitarian countries, assiduous functionaries in Ministries of Truth are clubbing history dumb and rendering language insensible.