I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!

The fact, and the intuition or logic about the fact, are severe coordinates in fiction. In the short story they must cross with hair-line precision.

Women have no wilderness in them They are provident instead Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts To eat dusty bread.

Stupidity always accompanies evil. Or evil, stupidity.

I don't like quintessential certitude.

No more pronouncements on lousy verse. No more hidden competition. No more struggling not to be a square.

The intellectual is a middle-class product; if he is not born into the class he must soon insert himself into it, in order to exist. He is the fine nervous flower of the bourgeoisie.