Indolence and melancholy: Each generates the other. If one can speak of such feeble passions as generating anything.

I choose to listen to the river for a while, thinking river thoughts, before joining the night and the stars.

Instant communication is not communication at all but merely a frantic, trivial, nerve-wracking bombardment of cliches, threats, fads, fashions, gibberish and advertising.

Whenever I read _Time_ or _Newsweek_ or such magazines, I wash my hands afterward. But how to wash off the small but odious stain such reading leaves on the mind?

Anyone not paranoid in this world must be crazy. . . . Speaking of paranoia, it's true that I do not know exactly who my enemies are. But that of course is exactly why I'm paranoid.

I have written much about many good places. But the best places of all, I have never mentioned.

A good writer must have more than vin rosé in his veins, use more than Chablis for ink.