It's not up to us what we learn, but merely whether we learn through joy or through pain.

Women are an alien race set down among us.

Journalism has not only its social stimulations but its aesthetic virtues. An invitation into print, from however suspect a source, is an opportunity to make something beautiful, to discover within oneself a treasure that would otherwise have remained buried.

Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five.

The difficulty is, all swing thoughts decay, like radium. What burnt up the course on Wednesday has turned to lead on Sunday. Yet it does not do to have a blank mind: the terrible hugeness of the course will rush into the vacuum and the ball will spray like a thing berserk.

Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey.

Government money in the arts, I fear, can only deflect artists from their responsibility to find an authentic market for their products.