Every step of progress means a duty repudiated, and a scripture torn up.

You may well ask me why...I took the time to write [books]. I can only reply that I do not know. There was no why about it. I had to: that was all.

Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.

It is clear that a novel cannot be too bad to be worth publishing. . . . It certainly is possible for a novel to be too good to be worth publishing.

Everybody who does not live in a prostitute's bed and on a diet of cocaine snow is called an ascetic nowadays.

Set me anything to do as a task, and it is inconceivable the desire I have to do something else.

I am a sort of collector of religions: and the curious thing is that I find I can believe in them all.