The first, indeed the only, requirement of a diet is that it should lose you weight without reducing your alcoholic intake by the smallest degree.

Education is one thing and instruction, however worthy, necessary and incidentally or monetarily educative, another.

Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust.

If there's one word that sums up everything that's gone wrong since the war, it's Workshop. After Youth, that is.

One of the great benefits of organised religion is that you can be forgiven your sins, which must be a wonderful thing. I mean, I carry my sins around with me, there's nobody there to forgive them.

He who truly believes he has a hangover has no hangover.

Self criticism must be my guide to action, and the first rule for its employment is that in itself it is not a virtue, only a procedure.