I have decided many a stylistic problem first by my head, then by heads or tails.

Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.

There are two kinds of writers, those who are and those who aren't. With the first, content and form belong together like soul and body; with the second, they match each other like body and clothes.

A good stylist should have narcissistic enjoyment as he works. He must be able to objectivize his work to such an extent that he catches himself feeling envious and has to jog his memory to find that he is himself the creator. In short, he must display that highest degree of objectivity which the world calls vanity.

Prussia: freedom of movement with a muzzle. Austria: an isolation cell in which screaming is allowed.

Contemporaries live from second hand to mouth.

The unattractive thing about chauvinism is not so much the aversion to other nations as the love of one's own.