We need new friends; some of us are cannibals who have eaten their old friends up; others must have ever-renewed audiences before whom to re-enact the ideal version of their lives.

But why wasn't I born, alas, in an age of Adjectives; why can one no longer write of silver-shedding Tears and moon-tailed Peacocks, of eloquent Death, of the Negro and star-enameled Night?

Youth is the time for adventures of the body, but age for the triumphs of the mind.

Money and sex are forces too unruly for our reason; they can only be controlled by taboos with which we tamper at our peril.

Only among people who think no evil can Evil monstrously flourish.

All our lives we are putting pennies — our most golden pennies — into penny-in-the-slot machines that are almost always empty.

The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of the blood.