We are used to the actions of human beings, not to their stillness.

[London] is sentimental and tolerant. The attitude to foreigners is like the attitude to dogs: Dogs are neither human nor British, but so long as you keep them under control, give them their exercise, feed them, pat them, you will find their wild emotions are amusing, and their characters interesting.

Absolute Evil is not the kingdom of hell. The inhabitants of hell are ourselves, i.e., those who pay our painful, embarrassing, humanistic duties to society and who are compromised by our intellectually dubious commitment to virtue, which can be defined by the perpetual smear-word of French polemic: the bourgeois. (Bourgeois equals humanist.) This word has long been anathema in France where categories are part of the ruling notion of logique. The word cannot be readily matched in England or America.

I am under the spell of language, which has ruled me since I was 10.

The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.

The profoundly humorous writers are humorous because they are responsive to the hopeless, uncouth, concatenations of life.

One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential.