A writer's self-consciousness, for which he is much scorned, is really a mode of interestedness, that inevitably turns outward.
You can never get the smell of smoke out. Like the smell of failure in life.
What is the past, after all, but a vast sheet of darkness in which a few moments, pricked apparently at random, shine?
irony is a way of having one's cake while appearing to eat it.
Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.
What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce. Mark Twain Women are an alien race set down among us.