Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.

As objects of contemplation, images of the atrocious can answer to several different needs. To steel oneself against weakness. To make oneself more numb. To acknowledge the existence of the incorrigible.

Most of my reading is rereading.

10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.

Unfortunately, moral beauty in art - like physical beauty in a person - is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness.

I don't consider devotion to the past a form of snobbery. Just one of the more disastrous forms of unrequited love.

The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.