Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.

I need words and print... I need print like an addict. I could live without it, perhaps. But I hope I never have to try.

I confidently predict the collapse of capitalism and the beginning of history. Something will go wrong in the machinery that converts money into money, the banking system will collapse totally, and we will be left having to barter to stay alive. Those who can dig in their garden will have a better chance than the rest. I'll be all right; I've got a few veg.

There would be more genuine rejoicing at the discovery of a complete new novel by Jane Austen than any other literary discovery, short of a new major play by Shakespeare.

There are some people who cannot get onto a train without imagining that they are about to voyage into the significant unknown; as though the notion of movement were inseparably connected with the notion of discovery, as though each displacement of the body were a displacement of the soul.

Why can't people be both flexible and efficient?

I'd rather be at the end of a dying tradition, which I admire, than at the beginning of a tradition which I deplore.