My children weary me. I can only see them as defective adults: feckless, destructive, frivolous, sensual, humorless.

The anguished suspense of watching the lips you hunger for, framing the words, the death sentence, of sheer triteness!

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

We are American at puberty. We die French.

Properly understood, style is not a seductive decoration added to a functional structure; it is of the essence of a work of art. The necessary elements of style are lucidity, elegance, and individuality; these three qualities combine to form a preservative which ensures the nearest approximation to permanence in the fugitive art of letters.

I never can understand how two men can write a book together; to me that's like three people getting together to have a baby.

...she had regained what I thought she had lost forever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say, "Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?