As subjects, we all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story. We cannot believe that it is finished, that we are 'finished,' even though we may say so; we expect another chapter, another installment, tomorrow or next week.

The passion for fact in a raw state is a peculiarity of the novelist.

The rationalist mind has always had its doubts about Venice. The watery city receives a dry inspection, as though it were a myth for the credulous- poets and honeymooners.

Sex annihilates identity, and the space given to sex in contemporary novels is an avowal of the absence of character.

For self-realization, a rebel demands a strong authority, a worthy opponent, God to his Lucifer.

... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.

The breakdown of our language, evident in the misuse, i.e., the misunderstanding of nouns and adjectives, is most grave, though perhaps not so conspicuous, in the handling of prepositions, those modest little connectives that hold the parts of a phrase or a sentence together. They are the joints of any language, what make it, literally, articulate.