Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés.

Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical.

A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.

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.

I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise--a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames--but still a paradise.

A toothache will cost a battle, a drizzle cancel an insurrection.

After the first shock of recognition - a sudden sense of "this is what I'm going to write" - the novel starts to breed by itself; the process goes on solely in the mind, not on paper. I feel a kind of gentle development, an uncurling inside, and I know that the details are there already, that in fact I would see them plainly if I looked closer, but I prefer to wait until what is loosely called inspiration has completed the task for me.