We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.

Maybe any action becomes cowardly once you stop to reason about it.

Proscription, martial law, the billeting of the rude troops, the tax collector, the unjust judge, anything at all, is sweeter than responsibility.

Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished.

A novelist is an elephant, but an elephant who must pretend to forget.

The things of this world reveal their essential absurdity when they are put in the Venetian context. In the unreal realm of the canals, as in a Swiftian Lilliput, the real world, with its contrivances, appears as a vast folly.

It really takes a hero to live any kind of spiritual life without religious belief.