But, of course only morons would ever think or speak of themselves as intellectuals. That's why they all look so sad.

Youth is the season of tragedy and despair. Youth is the time when one's whole life is entangled in a web of identity, in a perpetual maze of seeking and of finding, of passion and of disillusion, of vague longings and of nameless griefs, of pity that is a blade in the heart, and of 'all the little emptiness of love.

It is only by knowing how little life has in store for us that we are able to look on the bright side and avoid disappointment.

The attraction of horror is a mental, or even an intellectual, excitement, but the fascination of the repulsive, so noticeable incontemporary writing, can spring openly from some rotted substance within our civilization.

Mediocrity would always win by force of numbers, but it would win only more mediocrity.

... the novel, as a living force, if not as a work of art, owes an incalculable debt to what we call, mistakenly, the new psychology, to Freud, in his earlier interpretations, and more truly, I think, to Jung.

convictions ... are always getting in the way of opportunities.