Yes, of course, there's something fishy about describing people's feelings. You try hard to be accurate, but as soon as you start to define such and such a feeling, language lets you down. It's really a machine for making falsehoods. When we really speak the truth, words are insufficient. Almost everything except things like "pass the gravy" is a lie of a sort. And that being the case, I shall shut up. Oh, and... pass the gravy.

Language is a machine for making falsehoods.

Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.

All art deals with the absurd and aims at the simple. Good art speaks truth, indeed is truth, perhaps the only truth.

We shall be better prepared for the future if we see how terrible, how doomed the present is.

there is a natural tribal hostility between the married and the unmarried. I cannot stand the shows so often quite instinctively put on by married people to insinuate that they are not only more fortunate but in some way more moral than you are.

Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.