Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened.

Perhaps our only sickness is to desire a truth which we cannot bear rather than to rest content with the fictions we manufacture out of each other.

Everyone loathes his own country and countrymen if he is any sort of artist.

Very few people realise that sex is a psychic and not a physical act. The clumsy coupling of human beings is simply a biological paraphrase of this truth - a primitive method of introducing minds to each other, engaging them. But most people are stuck in the physical aspect, unaware of the poetic rapport which it so clumsily tries to teach.

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

Love is like trench warfare - you cannot see the enemy, but you know he is there and that it is wiser to keep your head down.

I suppose the secret of his success is in his tremendous idleness which almost approaches the supernatural.