The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detachment.

She bent over me again. Blood began to move around in me, like a prospective tenant looking over a house.

Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.

The moment a man begins to talk about technique that's proof that he is fresh out of ideas.

She was the music heard faintly on the edge of sound.

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk." —