Practice any faith you wish. Got a ball field up the island where you can practice. I'll give the Deity a fast one high and inside if he crowds the plate.

Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel?

You are all a lost generation. [with credit to Gertrude Stein]

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning, where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment.

I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made. Almost no new classics resemble other previous classics. At first people see only the awkwardness. Then they are not so perceptible. When they show so very awkwardly people think these awkwardnesses are the style and many copy them. This is regrettable.

A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists, all powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death.

It's harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.