I’ve never discussed my writing with others much, but I don’t believe it can do any harm. I don’t think that there’s any risk that ideas or materials will evaporate.
In books, the proportion of exceptional to commonplace people is very high; in reality, very low.
Only a person with a Best Seller mind can write Best Sellers.
No Romeo-and-Juliet acts, no nonsense about Love with a large L, none of that popular song claptrap with its skies of blue, dreams come true, heaven with you. Just sensuality for its own sake.
In spiritual matters, knowledge is dependent upon being; as we are, so we know.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know.
Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unshown marble of great sculpture. The silent bear no witness against themselves.
One thinks one’s something unique and wonderful at the center of the universe, when in fact one’s just a slight interruption in the ongoing march of entropy.
There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all its virtues are of no avail.
These are the sort of things people ought to look at. Things without pretensions, satisfied to be merely themselves.
Nothing is more dreadful than a cold, unimpassioned indulgence. And love infallibly becomes cold and unimpassioned when it is too lightly made.
Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God, from Belief.
All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.
The creation by word-power of something out of nothing – what is that but magic? And, may I add, what is that but literature?
Wild inside; raging, writhing – yes, “writhing” was the word, writhing with desire. But outwardly he was hopelessly tame; outwardly – baa, baa, baa.
Wherever the choice has had to be made between the man of reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the madman.
I know the outer world as well as you do, and I judge it. You know nothing of my inner world, and yet you presume to judge that world.
If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.
You should hurry up and acquire the cigar habit. It’s one of the major happinesses. And so much more lasting than love, so much less costly in emotional wear and tear.
Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers.