The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.

Many of the characters are fools and they're always playing tricks on me and treating me badly.

I think of myself as being an ethical man, but I don't try to teach ethics. I have no message. I know little about contemporary life. I don't read a newspaper. I dislike politics and politicians. I belong to no party whatever. My private life is a private life. I try to avoid photography and publicity.

In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of others.

I would define the baroque as that style that deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) its own possibilities, and that borders on self-caricature. The baroque is the final stage in all art, when art flaunts and squanders its resources.

I live in a grey world, rather like the silver screen world. But yellow stands out.

Best thing to happen for a poet. A fine death, no? An impressive death.