A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige throughbeing mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.

Destiny is another name for humanity's half-hearted yet persistent search for death. Again and again peoples have had the chance to live and show what would happen if human life were irrigated by continual happiness; and they have preferred to blow up the canals and perish of drought.

Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind.

There is no escape from mystery. It is the character of our being.

There are two kinds of imperialists - imperialists and bloody imperialists.

Nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth.

The memory, experiencing and re-experiencing, has such power over one's mere personal life, that one has merely lived.