Nothing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it from outside the thing itself, by people.

A curious thing about written literature: It is about four thousand years old, but we have no way of knowing whether four thousand years constitutes senility or the maiden blush of youth.

One of the things I miss about teaching is that students would tell me what I ought to read. One of my students, back in the 1960s, put me onto Borges, and I remember another mentioning Flann O'Brien's At Swim Two-Birds in the same way.

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

Nothing is loathsomer than the self-loathing of a self one loathes.

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

The story of your life is not your life; it's your story.