Perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it.

In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.

We think we're living in the present, but we're really living in the past.

Dostoevsky is such a bad writer it is hard to take him seriously as a novelist, though he is a wonderful philosopher.

A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.

How flat all sounds are at the seaside, flat and yet emphatic, like the sound of gunshots heard at a distance.

If they give me the bloody prize, why can't they say nice things about me?