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

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

The least stupid question a man asks in his lifetime is not: Is there a God and is He a god or a devil? But: Brother, why are you killing me?

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.

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.

Very rare, the intelligence of the heart. The intelligence of the whimsical brain is less rare, less attaching, sometimes tedious.

each time that I have run away - and from a habit it quickly became an illness - I have betrayed someone. Myself, but not always only myself.