The hunger of the spirit for eternity - as fierce as a starving man's for bread - is much less a craving to go on living than a craving for redemption. Oh, and a protest against absurdity.

The impossible talked of is less impossible from the moment words are laid to it.

The gesture with which one generation guards the next is the movement, and the only time we see it clearly, of life itself.

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

All pornography is to a degree sadistic - inevitably.

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.

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