What you haven't done by thirty you're not likely to do. What you have done you'll do lots more.

A cynic is a kind of romantic who has aged.

Students present themselves...like a succession of CDs whose shimmering surface gives no clue to their contents without the equipment to play them.

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

If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.

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.

My only duty was to describe reality as it had come to me-to give the mundane its beautiful due.