Fiction should always steer clear of political considerations.

It was one of the charms of the International Zone that you could get anything you wanted if you paid for it. Do anything, too, for that matter; - there were no incorruptibles. It was only a question of price.

A black star appears, a point of darkness in the night sky's clarity. Point of darkness and gateway to repose. Reach out, pierce the fine fabric of the sheltering sky, take repose.

Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another. Indeed, he would have found it difficult to tell, among the many places he had lived, precisely where it was he had felt most at home.

One never took the time to savour the details; one said: another day, but always with the hidden knowledge that each day was unique and fatal, that there never would be a return, another time.

I wanted to meet other artists. I suppose I simply felt that I was taking pot shots at clay pipes. Pop! Down goes Gertrude, down goes Jean Cocteau, down goes André Gide.

Although I knew enough Freud to believe that the sex urge was an important mainspring of life, it still seemed to me that any conscious manifestation of sex was necessarily ludicrous. Defecation and copulation were two activities which made a human being totally ridiculous. At least the former could be conducted in private, but the latter by definition demanded a partner. I discovered, though, that whenever I ventured this opinion, people took it as a joke.