In adultery, there is usually tenderness and self-sacrifice; in murder, courage; in profanation and blasphemy, a certain satanic splendour. Judas elected those offences unvisited by any virtues: abuse of confidence and informing.

Censorship is the mother of metaphor.

I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future . . . I felt myself to be, for an unknown period of time, an abstract perceiver of the world.

The poverty of yesterday was less squalid than the poverty we purchase with our industry today. Fortunes were smaller then as well.

Loneliness does not worry me; life is difficult enough, putting up with yourself and with your own habits.

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.

Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.