Critics have been amusing themselves for a long time by auscultating fiction for signs of heart failure.

The past is able to close round certain moments, as if they were seeds, and deliver them again fresh and living in the present.

In my firm, we dealt in lies. Advertising is that ... the skilful use of the truth to mislead, to spoil, to debase.

the sex even in serious pornography has less singularity than the mating of squirrels.

Truth is the only good and the purest pity. ... Men lie for profit or for pity. All lies turn to poison, but a lie that is told for pity or shame breeds such a host of ills that no power on earth can compass their redemption.

Great advertising is the expression of deep emotional sincerity.

No one asks public men to be strictly moral, but they must seem to be well-behaved.