Guilt always hurries towards its complement, punishment: only there does its satisfaction lie.

Our inventions mirror our secret wishes.

I have decided to leave Clea’s last letter un-answered. I no longer wish to coerce anyone, to make promises, to think of life in terms of compacts, resolutions, covenants. It will be up to Clea to interpret my silence according to her own needs and desires, to come to me if she has need or not, as the case may be. Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?

All artists today are expected to cultivate a little fashionable unhappiness.

It takes a lot of energy and a lot of neurosis to write a novel. If you were really sensible, you'd do something else.

Lovers can find nothing to say to each other that has not been said and unsaid a thousand times over. Kisses were invented to translate such nothings into wounds

Poverty is a great cutter-off and riches a great shutter-off.