As I've explained to my wife many times, you have to kill your wife or mistress to get on the front page of the papers.

Do not imagine that Art is something which is designed to give gentle uplift and self-confidence . Art is not a brassiere. At least, not in the English sense. But do not forget that brassiere is the French word for life-jacket.

Life isn't just addition and subtraction. There's also the accumulation, the multiplication, of loss, of failure.

You grew old first not in your own eyes, but in other people's eyes; then, slowly, you agreed with their opinion of you.

As I've explained to my wife many times, you have to kill your wife or mistress to get on the front page of the papers.

...God knows you can have complication and difficulty without any compensating depth or seriousness

Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from our human and filial duty which was to study, pass exams, use those qualifications to find a job, and then put together a way of life unthreateningly fuller than that of our parents, who would approve, while privately comparing it to their own earlier lives, which had been simpler, and therefore superior.