The Genie declared that in his time and place there were scientists of the passions who maintained that language itself, on the one hand, originated in 'infantile pregenital erotic exuberance, polymorphously perverse,' and that conscious attention, on the other, was a 'libidinal hypercathexis' - by which magic phrases they seemed to mean that writing and reading, or telling and listening, were literally ways of making love.

Tis e'er the wont of simple folk to prize the deed and o'erlook the motive, and of learned folk to discount the deed and lay open the soul of the doer.

It's easier and sociabler to talk technique than it is to make art.

I admire writers who can make complicated things simple, but my own talent has been to make simple things complicated.

All men are loyal, but their objects of allegiance are at best approximate.

More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations.

History - an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant