Pornography is essentially reductive, an exercise in the nothing-but mode, a depersonalizing of the human beings involved, a showing-up of human lust as nothing but an affair of the genitals.

A politician is forced to make a habit of noble phrases and optimistic lies. In the end they infect himself.

An animal is not cruel; it lives wholly in the instant leap on its prey, in the present taste of marrow or blood. Cruelty begins with the memory, and the pleasures of the memory are impure; they draw their strength along levels where no sun has reached.

The young are so much more vulnerable than the old - the stuff is still warm and malleable, it takes impressions.

There is as much vanity in self-scourgings as in self-justification.

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

One of the uncovenanted benefits of living for a long time is that, having so many more dead than living friends, death can appear as a step backwards into the joyous past.