An autobiography is only 'a sort of life' - it may contain less errors of fact than a biography, but it is of necessity even more selective: it begins later and it ends prematurely.

Reality in our century is not something to be faced.

For God's sake stop making people in your image. Harry was real. He wasn't just your hero and my lover. He was Harry. He was in a racket. He did bad things. What about it? He was the man we knew.

He had stylized himself--life was easier that way. He had chosen a physical mould just as writer chooses a technical form.

As long as one suffers one lives.

He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness - the sense that is where we really belong.

So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days.