Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart.

The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.

I really don't want to encourage young writers. Keep them down and out and silent is my motto.

But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it's fatal not to go through with it.

All men are mortal, and therefore all men are losers; our profoundest loyalty goes out to the failed.

I never made a decision in my life that wasn't one hundred per cent selfish.

It skims in through the eye, and by means of the utterly delicate retina hurls shadows like insect legs inward for translation. Then an immense space opens up in silence and an endlessly fecund sub-universe the writer descends, and asks the reader to descend after him, not merely to gain instructions but also to experience delight, the delight of mind freed from matter and exultant in the strength it has stolen from matter.