It is not a matter of indifference whether we like oysters or clams, snails or shrimp, if only we know how to unravel the existential significance of these foods.
That is exactly the writer's problem. What does literature stand for in a hungry world?
You are -- your life, and nothing else.
Respectable society believed in God in order to avoid having to speak about him.
If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.
[Contemporary writer] could be a kind of [Samuel] Beckett who would not be felt to be totally committed to despair.