I can't see or feel the conflict between love and religion. To me, they're the same thing.

Every love has a poetic relevance of its own; each love brings to light only what to it is relevant. Outside lies the junk-yard of what does not matter.

Yes, writing a novel, my boy, is like driving pigs to market - you have one of them making a bolt down the wrong lane; another won't get over the right stile.

I know that I have in my make-up layers of synthetic experiences, and that the most powerful of my memories are only half true.

But complex people are never certain that they are not crooks, never certain their passports are quite in order, and are, therefore, unnerved by the slightest thing.

All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.

Solitary and farouche people don't have relationships; they are quite unrelatable. If you and I were capable of being altogether house-trained and made jolly, we should be nicer people, but not writers.