The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.

The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming?

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.

Writing is a wholetime job: no professional writer can afford only to write when he feels like it.

But what is criticism? Criticism is purely destructive; anyone can destroy, but not everyone can build up.

He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood; it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else.

My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.