Life is short. From here to that old car you know so well there is a stretch of twenty, twenty-five paces. It is a very short walk. Make those twenty-five steps. Now. Right now. Come just as you are. And we shall live happily ever after.

The thought, when written down, becomes less oppressive, but some thoughts are like a cancerous tumor: you express is, you excise it, and it grows back worse than before.

Adultery is a most conventional way to rise above the conventional.

Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them.

No difference exists between American and European manners. A proletarian from Chicago can be just as Philistine as an English duke.

Of all my Russian books, the defense contains and diffuses the greatest 'warmth' which may seem odd seeing how supremely abstract Chess is supposed to be

It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.