Well chaps first I’d like to say a few vile things more or less at random, not only because it is expected of me but also because I enjoy it.
Goals incapable of attainment have driven many a man to despair, but despair is easier to get to than that – one need merely look out of the window, for example.
Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life.
The important thing is the educational experience itself – how to survive it.
I don’t think you can talk about progress in art – movement, but not progress.
Anathematization of the world is not an adequate response to the world.
The best way to live is by not knowing what will happen to you at the end of the day...
Is death that which gives meaning to life?
The writer is one who, emnbarking upon a task, does not know what to do.
I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.
The center will not hold if it has been spot-welded by an operator whose deepest concern is not with the weld but with his lottery ticket.
Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard? Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him.
Self-criticism sessions were held, but these produced more criticism than could usefully be absorbed or accomodated.
I don’t think you can talk about progress in art – movement, but not progress. You can speak of a point on a line for the purpose of locating things, but it’s a horizontal line, not a vertical one.
There’s not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.
Let me point out, if it has escaped your notice, that what an artist does, is fail.
Now, here is the point about the self: it is insatiable. It is always, always hankering. It is what you might call rapacious to a fault. The great flaming mouth to the thing is never in this world going to be stuff full.
Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, rather because it wishes to be art. However much the writer might long to be straightforward, these virtues are no longer available to him. He discovers that in being simple, honest, straightforward, nothing much happens.
Capitalism places every man in competition with his fellows for a share of the available wealth. A few people accumulate big piles, but most do not. The sense of community falls victim to this struggle.
Can the life of the time be caught in an advertisement? Is that how it is, really, in the meadows of the world?