Power doesn't corrupt people; people corrupt power.

Justice? You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.

There is nothing more distressing or tiresome than a writer standing in front of an audience and reading his work.

Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender.

Say a word, say a thousand to me on the telephone and I shall choose the wrong one to cling to as though you had said it after long deliberation when only I provoked it from you, I will cling to it from among a thousand, to be provoked and hurl it back with something I mean no more than you meant that, something for you to cling to and retreat clinging to.

He walked out into the cold morning asking himself this heretical question: Can you start measuring a minute at any instant you wish?

If it is not beautiful for someone, it does not exist.