In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too

Do we always, always to the point of misery, do a thing?

I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.

You have to fight for your life. That's the chief condition on which you hold it.

One must bear in mind the odd angle or slant that the rays of love have to take in order to reach a heart like mine.

With a novelist, like a surgeon, you have to get a feeling that you've fallen into good hands - someone from whom you can accept the anesthetic with confidence.

All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.