A squalid phantasmagoria of breath

I learned a little of beauty - enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth - and I found, moreover, that there was no great literary tradition; there was only the tradition of the eventful death of every literary tradition.

They're a rotten crowd', I shouted across the lawn. 'You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.

You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.

An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional.

It was about then [1920] that I wrote a line which certain people will not let me forget: "She was a faded but still lovely woman of twenty-seven."

Very few of the people who accentuate the futility of life remark the futility of themselves. Perhaps they think that in proclaiming the evil of living they somehow salvage their own worth from the ruin - but they don't, even you and I.