Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.

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.

Ireland is a great country to die or be married in.

every short story is an experiment - what one must ask is not only, did it come off, but was it, as an experiment, worth making?

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.

...the power-loving temperament is more dangerous when it either prefers or is forced to operate in what is materially a void. Wehave everything to dread from the dispossessed.

Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.