As honest as you could expect a man to be in a world where it's out of style.

Writers who get written about become self-conscious. They develop a regrettable habit of looking at themselves through the eyes of other people. They are no longer alone, they have an investment in critical praise, and they think they must protect it. This leads to a diffusion of effort. The writer watches himself as he works. He grows more subtle and he pays for it by loss of organic dash.

She hung up and I set out the chess board. I filled a pipe, paraded the chessmen and inspected them for French shaves and loose buttons, and played a championship tournament game between Gortchakoff and Meninkin, seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armour, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.

Some days I feel like playing it smooth. Some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.

Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead.

The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication.

A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy.