I'm a bit like a sponge. When I'm not writing I absorb life like water. When I write I squeeze the sponge a little - and out comes, not water but ink.

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy.

One of them, for example, which will probably haunt me more than any other is the problem of communication.

If your vision of the world is of a certain kind you will put poetry in everything, necessarily.

Madame....gloatingly savored her words as earlier she had savored her pig's trotter.

Trotsky rises to give me his hand, then sits at his desk, gently allowing his regard to light on my person.

I write fast, because I have not the brains to write slow.