We're past the age of heroes and hero kings. ... Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it's up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting.

We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.

There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't.

All love is betrayal, in that it flatters life. The loveless man is best armed.

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again.

Seemed to me important in writing about people to be able to describe the sexual transactions between them. It's - for many people it's the height of, what they see, of ecstasy and poetry is in their sexual encounters. And furthermore, personality - human personality does not end in the bedroom, but persists.

A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.