To stay in places and to leave, to trust, to distrust, to no longer believe and believe again, . . . to watch the snow come, to watch it go, to hear rain on a tent, to know where I can find what I want.

Each day of not writing, of comfort, of being that which he despised, dulled his ability and softened his will to work so that, finally, he did no work at all.

It is impossible to believe the emotional and spiritual intensity and pure, classic beauty that can be produced by a man, an animal, and a piece of scarlet serge draped over a stick.

Night life is when everybody says what the hell and you do not remember who paid the bill.

As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early 'forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.

War is not won by victory.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.