She took kisses like so many coats of paint […] how long and how vainly I searched for excuses which might make her amorality if not palatable at lest understandable. I realize now the time I wasted in this way; instead of enjoying her and turning aside from these preoccupations with the thought, ‘She is untrustworthy as she is beautiful. She takes love as plants do water, lightly, thoughtlessly.

How grudging memory is, and how bitterly she clutches the raw material of her daily work.

For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential - the imagination.

They say that if you get bored enough with calamity you can learn to laugh.

Life is like a cucumber. One minute it's in your hand, the next it's up you ass.

An idea is like a rare bird which cannot be seen. What one sees is the trembling of the branch it has just left.

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.