For what I have received may the Lord make me truly thankful. And more truly for what I have not received.

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

From so much of this seriously-intended pornography there rises, even when it is lewdly or boisterously comic, the acrid smell, unmistakable, of self-dislike.

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.

to grow old is to have taken away, one by one, all gifts of life, the food and wine, the music and the company. ... the gods unloose, one by one, the mortal fingers that cling to the edge of the table.

If the novel is dying, I see no chance that dismembering it will revive it.

A joke is a joke or the image of a truth.