Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.

Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel.

One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.

Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.

Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.

If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.