Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.

I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art.

An active and creative reader is a re-reader.

Genius still means to me, in my Russian fastidiousness and pride of phrase, a unique dazzling gift. The gift of James Joyce, and not the talent of Henry James.

Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.

You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own.

I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust