What seems to sell books is good word-of-mouth, not promotion tours. I'm too old to believe that media promotion of a book really matters. What matters is how it will look 100 years from now, not how many copies are sold.

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

A writer's self-consciousness, for which he is much scorned, is really a mode of interestedness, that inevitably turns outward.

I'm somewhat shy about the brutal facts of being a carnivore. I don't like meat to look like animals. I prefer it in the form of sausages, hamburger and meat loaf, far removed from the living thing.

Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews.

It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies; unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks lateness, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patching to repair great rents in the quotidian.

The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever.