For both writer and reader, the novel is a lonely, physically inactive affair. Only the imagination races.

The fact is that gardening, more than most of our other activities except sometimes love-making, confronts us with the inexplicable.

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.

For both writer and reader, the novel is a lonely, physically inactive affair. Only the imagination races.

You mustn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.

America is indeed a revelation, though not quite the one that was planned. Given a clean slate, man, it was hoped, would write the future. Instead, he has written his past.

I was going to get myself recognized at any price. If I could not win fame by goodness, I was ready to do it by badness.