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

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

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.

... the stomach is near the heart and one appetite pricks on another.

The critic's hankering to be law-giver rather than servant of literature is irrepressible.

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.

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