For myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end.

Then I reflect that all things happen, happen to one, precisely now. Century follows century, and things happen only in the present. There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens happens to me.

I foresee that man will resign himself each day to new abominations, and soon that only bandits and soldiers will be left...

The art of writing is mysterious; the opinions we hold are ephemeral , and I prefer the Platonic idea of the Muse to that of Poe, who reasoned, or feigned to reason, that the writing of a poem is an act of the intelligence. It never fails to amaze me that the classics hold a romantic theory of poetry, and a romantic poet a classical theory.

I am attracted to fantastic writing, and fantastic reading, of course. But I think things that we call fantastic may be real, in the sense of being real symbols.

My father and he had cemented one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether.

We accept reality so readily - perhaps because we sense that nothing is real.