In France, even heresy rapidly hardens into dogma.

All writers who can claim to be called 'living' must be political in a sense. They must have what the Quakers call a concern to understand what is happening in the world, and must engage themselves, in their writing, to promote no comfortable lies, of the sort which people will pay well to be told rather than the truth.

Is it really beyond our wits to devise some form of censorship which would trap only the crudely sadistic?

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.

Surprise will be my last emotion, not fear.

If we are to survive on this planet, there must be compromises.

Language is one of the thin walls humanity has built up over centuries against its own bestial and destructive impulses.