For the sake of my country, and perhaps a little for the sake of my soul, I have given up the deep peace of being in opposition.

International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge.

the reward for total abstinence from alcohol seems, illogically enough, to be the capacity for becoming intoxicated without it.

Bad art is maintained by the neurotic, who is deadly afraid of authentic art because it inspires him to go on living, and he is terrified of life.

I have never been able to write with anything more than the left hand of my mind; the right hand has always been engaged in something to do with personal relationships. I don't complain, because I think my left hand's power, as much as it has, is due to its knowledge of what my right hand is doing.

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

It would be no loss to the world if most of the writers now writing had been strangled at birth.