To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given.

The worst thing in the world is a bitter woman. That's one thing about your mother, she's never been bitter.

Why does life feel, to us as we experience it, so desperately urgent and so utterly pointless at the same time?

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

American art in general... takes to surreal exaggerations and metaphors; but its Puritan work ethic has little use for the playful self-indulgence behind Parisian Surrealism.

The heart prefers to move against the grain of circumstance; perversity is the souls very life.

Sun and moon, sun and moon, time goes.