You can kill time in a number of ways but it always depends on the kind of time you're fighting: some time is unkillable, immortal

It's an ancient idea that the leader of a democracy should not be the cleverest but the most average. That's an arguable point, but the world has decided otherwise - except in America, where it still divides the country right down the middle.

Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark - spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror. It's passing, yet I'm the one who's doing all the moving.

You can kill time in a number of ways but it always depends on the kind of time you're fighting: some time is unkillable, immortal

What did Nabokov and Joyce have in common, apart from the poor teeth and the great prose? Exile, and decades of near pauperism. A compulsive tendency to overtip. An uxoriousness that their wives deservedly inspired. More than that, they both lived their lives 'beautifully'--not in any Jamesian sense (where, besides, ferocious solvency would have been a prerequisite), but in the droll fortitude of their perseverance. They got the work done, with style.

Probably human cruelty is fixed and eternal. Only styles change.

Probably all writers are at some point briefly under the impression that they are in the forefront of disintegration and chaos, that they are among the first to live and work after things fall apart.