American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.

I am glad my life is coming to an end. To think that it might last another five hundred years, now that would be terrible, in my case.

Universities are filled with poets and novelists conducting demure and careful lives in imitation of Eliot and Forster and those others who (through what seems to be have been discretion) made it.

Those who have not undergone minor disasters are usually being held in reserve for something major

It is notable how little empathy is cultivated or valued in our society. I put this down to our traditional racism and obsessive sectarianism. Even so, one would think that we would be encouraged to project ourselves into the character of someone of a different race or class, if only to be able to control him. But no effort is made.

I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.

Since the individual's desire to dominate his environment is not a desirable trait in a society which every day grows more and more confining, the average man must take to daydreaming.