Great critics do not explicate a text; they describe it and then report on what they have described, if the description itself is not the criticism.

I don't seem to be cynical to myself but how what I say goes down with others is their problem. I'm realistic.

Vitriolic really is personal. I am vitriolic. I am savage.

Traitors who prevail are patriots; usurpers who succeed are divine emperors.

Freud did some serious damage to American literature - a lot of writers began therapy in the 1940s, after which they all became terribly egocentric.

I'm not for real revolutions, because they always bring you the opposite of what you want. You very seldom get what you want if you have a violent revolution.

Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at galaxy's edge, all the more reason for us to maintain in proper balance what we have here. Because there is nothing else. Nothing. This is it. And quite enough, all in all.