Natural beauty is essentially temporary and sad, hence the impression of obscene mockery which artificial flowers give us.

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.

People go around mourning the death of God; it's the death of sssin that bothers me. Without ssin, people aren't people any more, they're just ssoul-less sheep.

In general, the churches, visited by me often on weekdays... bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola; they promoted thirst without quenching it.

Fiction is in danger of becoming a kind of poetry. Only other poets read it. Only other fiction writers care about it.

It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.

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.