To be first-rate at anything you have to stake your all. Nobody's an artist 'on the side'.

How smartly September comes in, like a racing gig, all style, no confusion.

Rome is everybody's memory.

If you don't love life you can't enjoy an oyster; there is a shock of freshness to it and intimations of the ages of man, some piercing intuition of the sea and all its weeds and breezes. [They] shiver you for a split second.

To be first-rate at anything you have to stake your all. Nobody's an artist 'on the side'.

Doubt remains a luxury I won't do without.

Rome is ... an impossible compounding of time, in which no century has respect for any other and all hit you in a jumble at every turn.