All good novelists have bad memories. What you remember comes out as journalism; what you forget goes into the compost of the imagination.

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

Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive: then the millstone weighs on the breast.

All the emotions have something in common. People are quite aware of the sorrow there always is in lust, but they are not so aware of the lust there is in sorrow.

Rocinante was of more value for a true traveller than a jet plane. Jet planes were for business men.

Those who marry God can become domesticated too - it's just as hum-drum a marriage as all the others. The word Love means a formal touch of the lips as in the ceremony of the Mass, and Ave Maria like dearest is a phrase to open a letter. This marriage like the world's marriages was held together by habits and tastes shared in common between God and themselves - it was God's taste to be worshipped and their taste to worship, but only at stated hours like a suburban embrace on a Saturday night.

It's a good world if you don't weaken.