I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst.

Do not be awed by giant predecessors. Be ill-tempered with their renown. Point out flaws. Frighten interviewers from Time. Appear in Playboy. Sell to the movies.

It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.

My principal failing as a writer is the lack of spontaneity; the nuisance of parallel thoughts, second thoughts, third thoughts; inability to express myself properly in any language unless I compose every damned sentence in my bath, in my mind, at my desk.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.

Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.