The ideology of capitalism makes us all into connoisseurs of liberty - of the indefinite expansion of possibility.

What is the most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.

The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony.

The ratio of authentic literature to trash in pornography may be somewhat lower than the ratio of novels of genuine literary meritto the entire volume of sub-literary fiction produced for mass taste. But it is probably not lower than, for instance, that of another somewhat shady sub-genre with a few first-rate books to its credit, science fiction.

It is easier to endure than to change. But once one has changed, what was endured is hard to recall.

Most writers I know have switched to word processors. I haven't but I'm very curious about why people like it so much. I think it has something to do with the fact that at last writing, which has been such an old-fashioned, artisanal activity, even on a typewriter, has now entered the central domain of modern experience which is that of making copies, being involved in the world of duplicates and machine-mediated activities.

Read a lot. Expect something big, something exalting or deepening from a book. No book is worth reading that isn't worth re-reading.