No other human being, no woman, no poem or music, book or painting can replace alcohol in its power to give man the illusion of real creation.

A book consists of two layers: on top, the readable layer ... and underneath, a layer that was inaccessible. You only sense its existence in a moment of distraction from the literal reading, the way you see childhood through a child. It would take forever to tell what you see, and it would be pointless.

Alcohol is barren. The words a man speaks in the night of drunkenness fade like the darkness itself at the coming of day.

It has been my face. It's got older still, or course, but less, comparatively, than it would otherwise have done. It's scored with deep, dry wrinkles, the skin is cracked. But my face hasn't collapsed, as some with fine feature have done. It's kept the same contours, but its substance has been laid waste. I have a face laid waste.

In love there are no vacations. No such thing. Love has to be lived fully with its boredom and all that.

We, her children, are heroic, dersperate.

You have to be very fond of men. Very, very fond. You have to be very fond of them to love them. Otherwise they're simply unbearable.